What Would You Choose? Your Wife Or Your Job? An Astronaut’s Choice.

By: Don Caldwell

What is more important, your family or your career?

Excerpts italicized:

The congresswoman who was shot in Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, is still recovering at her hospital, and her husband is going to make a choice between staying with his wife and flying in his mission to space..

There are hints that astronaut Mark Kelly will blast into space in April, as commander of Endeavour's final voyage. That would mean leaving his wounded wife, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, to continue her rehab without him for at least a few weeks.


By now, Giffords, 40, should be at a stage where there's little risk for complications, Lacey noted.


"He has to search deep how he feels about where he's going to be emotionally five, 10, 20 years from now because she's going to live through this now," Lacey said. "No matter what her outcome, whether it's very positive or not so positive, he's going to be in this for the long haul. What occurs during that two- to three-four week span of the training and the flight may be insignificant over the next 10 years. Either way."

Most of us have been conditioned to “know” what the answer to that question, but it is of course different to know the answer and to really believe it.  As many of us perhaps don’t really know what we believe.

It has been said that the most valuable thing we have to give of ourselves is our time. It is easy to say what is right, or even think about it from time to time, but to actually do it is a whole other matter entirely. And that is where “time” comes in…

This astronaut has been given a choice between the pride, accomplishment, and wealth that accompanies ones’ career, and his family.

Which is the most selfless choice?

Which one would bear the greatest fruit in the end?

If the only people left alive in the world were your family, what difference would all of your accomplishments make in the grand scheme of things? Why is it that we place so much importance on what other people think when it is likely that these “other people” are those of which we will never know or love? Is it not all in the end nothing but pride talking? Pride that has been conditioned through many years of television and secular society telling us all the different ways by which it is an OK thing…

Many would perhaps think “Well he is going to Space! that has to be an exception…” . Would you feel the same way if the husband was a salesman on a business trip to Germany? What difference does it make being an Astronaut as compared to a salesman? Are we perhaps holding on to the illusion of greatness (the pride) of one vocation as compared to another? Do we put too much time / importance on our careers in the first place?

We all die in about the same amount of time from one field or another, and does anyone think that God is more pleased with earthly accomplishments than if we devoted that time instead with our family or friends?

Is it better to help 10,000 people a little bit, or to be the whole world of help to just 5?
Which would you choose: pride or family?

So which of the two do you choose to give your time to? Does that not say something about where your priorities really are???

Would you choose to be a whole world of good to just that 5?

(ORIGINAL LINK) FoxNews.com - Astronaut's Choice: Fly to Space or Stay With Wife