For Dionna, Glover’s wife, reading Scripture keeps anxiety in check. “I may be a basket case here once he leaves the planet,” she told the interviewer. “I’m praying that I won’t be.” On Facebook, the family thanks supporters and requests prayer for the crew.
Dionna Glover is grateful for high-tech long-distance communications. “NASA has provided lots of opportunities for us to keep in touch, and I’m hoping we can still study together, worship together, and figure out ways to still do that as a family” during the mission, she says. For now, she and her daughters plan to continue worshiping virtually. “Once it’s safe,” she says, “we’ll return to in-person activities and in-person worship and Bible studies.”
For his interview with The Christian Chronicle, Glover wore a shirt featuring names of some prominent African Americans. When asked about patriotism and U.S. social issues, the astronaut says, “God doesn’t really have to have a concern for my patriotism, but I am an American, and we were blessed to be born in America.” Understanding “the legacy that we’re all a part of” is important, he adds. “I do think we have work to do in terms of making sure that a complete and entire whole story is told.”
During tough times, such as 2020, Glover says, “We all need to lean on God, but we also need to lean on each other and be encouraging to one another.” The Bible contains “so many really simple lessons,” he says. “To love God first and foremost, to…have a healthy love of yourself, and then to love your brother as yourself. If all of us are doing that, so many of these other issues that we allow to divide us stop becoming barriers to relationships.”
