Blessed Be The Love Letter

I've been blessed, although it didn't seem like a blessing at the time because love letters meant my husband and I were separated by distance, but I have been blessed with love letters. Lots and lots of love letters that strain box lids and tire the strength of elastic bands.

We spent most of our engagement apart, due to boot camp and him being stationed in California while I was in Washington. He was gone 6 months of our first year of marriage. He has been deployed three times for months on end and attended numerous academies for further schooling.

So we wrote. We wrote about every day life, we wrote about how much we missed each other, we wrote about our hopes for the future and we wrote our love for each other. We wrote of unhappiness, of bills coming due, of children and fellow soldiers behaving poorly. We wrote it all.

Nothing was left unsaid. I wanted him to feel connected to our life at home, he wanted me to know he was thinking of us always. Distance didn't mean I didn't need some help or advice, or that he didn't need encouragement in his endeavors.

It isn't just letters either. We are so used to writing, we write notes. When I used to make his lunch, I'd slip a note in almost daily. When he leaves for a weekend, chances are I will find a note from him taped to the mirror, or the coffee pot, or the computer. A for-no-reason-except-I-love-you card is pulled out from an inside coat pocket, or tucked under a pillow, and suddenly whatever is going on, the dinner not quite right, the truck wires crossed, the sick kids and dog, the chores and work that is never ending, all of that disappears and for a moment it's just the two of us.

I've got boxes galore filled with notes, cards, and letters. Some have been censored for our children (if you find letters with pages torn in half, you probably don't want to know) but for the most part they are whole and true. I can pull one out and feel that moment again, tiredly writing a letter before I fell asleep or giddy with excitement that a letter from him arrived.

It's a slice of our life from years past, preserved. We've been together 20 years, and I'm pretty sure he's made me fall in love with him a thousand times over just through the words he writes. Blessed be the love letter. Blessed be the love that these letters have tended.