Governor and Mrs. Perry are friends of mine. We all get to see Rick Perry as a politician, candidate for President, and longest serving Governor of Texas. I’ve gotten to see Rick and Anita Perry as themselves — covered in dust bunnies (“ghost turds” as the Governor called them) moving out of the Governor’s Mansion. We have traded prayer lists of people to pray for. We’ve talked politics, scripture, family, and life.

Rick and Anita Perry are two of the most profoundly decent, kind people I have encountered in politics. Most all politicians are when the cameras are rolling. Not all of them are after hours. The Perry family are just good people.

If you need any more evidence of that, here is a previously untold story that gives you a sense of their souls.

Before he became immortalized as the “Lone Survivor,” a Navy SEAL who escaped a 2005 Taliban ambush on a mountain slope in Afghanistan, Marcus Luttrell was a broken man in search of a haven.

He found it one day in the spring of 2007 when, struggling to recover his body and mind and with the horrors of war still raw, he showed up unannounced at the Texas governor’s mansion and asked to see Rick Perry.

Often times, particularly in the South, people say that so and so is in their prayers. I keep track of the people I want to pray for. I scribble down names and notes. Rick and Anita Perry are often there, not because they need it in a particularly way, but because I know they are so often praying for others I want to make sure someone is praying for them.