Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Love Letters

This weekend I spent a lot of time going through things, organizing and trying to declutter the house.  I found a bin full of things I wanted to keep in a safe place...a memory box.  I probably spent a good hour going through old pictures, crafts my kids have made and even found my first drivers license...WHOA!  I pretty much rolled on the floor laughing at myself and my big poofy hair. Good times...good times.



Then I found a stack of papers and started reading and discovered they were old letters TJ and I wrote back and forth to each other when we were dating.  He lived in SC, was finishing up college and his last season with his original cheerleaders.  He came up one weekend in November 1999 to try to locate a building for his dream business he wanted to call East Carolina Cheerleading and Tumbling School, ECCATS.  It was the name he'd picked out years earlier and a dream he'd had for the kids living in his community back home.  A cheer gym...something he'd been laughed at about and told it would never work.  That's when we "re-met".   We'd gone to High School together, he was 2 grades older than me so I knew him and he knew me, but that was pretty much it back then. 



Boy were we MUSHY!  We were "that couple" talking about love and a life together, dreams of kids and a future.  It was the greatest thing learning about someone through letters and phone calls.  We had a long distance romance for at least the first 5 months of our relationship.  It took him several weeks to even convince me to go out with him.  I'd just gotten out of a relationship that went no where and I wasn't interested in more games and playboys.  So, as cute as he was I didn't give him the time of day...until his insistent phone calls and begging (LOL) finally convinced me and I said "FINE, I'll go out with you"...fully expecting it to be the last time.

I'm so glad I did. We've never looked back.  All the plans written on paper so long ago have come true. A bond built between us over years of hard work and commitment, hard times and devastation, good times and love, laughter and tears have seen us through it all.  Twelve years have gone by like a breeze really.  He still chases me around like two kids that just started dating.  He still holds my hand the way I prayed the husband God picked for me would.  He still loves me inspite of myself.  And I, him. 

A memory box (and now a blog) is a great thing to have for all of those things you just can't throw away or don't want to forget.  Going through it every few years will remind you where you've been, where you're heading and why you make the choices you do.  I'm grateful for the rock in my life that I call my husband.  Although I am not perfect, far from it and I make my mistakes and learn from them I could not ask for a better husband and life partner. 

From one of our letters:
"One day we will be that old couple sitting on the front porch in our rocking chairs, gray hair and all wrinkly".






Until then.....







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