Love Letters

Dustin and my courtship was almost entirely long distance. This was both good and annoying. One of the good things about it, is that a vast portion of our relationship is archived for all time and eternity in letters and emails.

In fact for a long time our relationship was nothing but letters. We met in the Missionary Training Centre (I've decided to spell like a Canadian.) Of course, I had met a couple of his sisters and for years he had known my sister, who is 13 yrs older then me, and Dustin even has a memory of having me pointed out to him in the church hall, but the fact is that we met in the MTC. (I'm still a little embarrassed about this, as it is some what of a mormon culture no no.) And this being the case, after three weeks of meeting each other, we were sent to places a thousand miles apart. No visits, no phone calls, and no emails allowed between us. Thus letters. Only....okay so we sent a couple tapes with us recording ourselves talking, but other then that...letters.

When we were both home, there were phone calls. Long frequent phone calls (my roommates hated me for this. Well not hate, but annoyed.) and emails. This was before the days of google voice, facebook, and even skype....wow I sound old...and I just didn't do instant messenger. In fact it was before gmail. In other words, it was expensive to call (but we did anyway) and email was the only other form of communication.

Recently we moved into a nice place that we plan to live in at least a year (HALLELUJAH!!!) and unpacked ALL our stuff. Dustin suggested that I have my very own room. He said it would be my craft room and my supply room, but that he was really hoping that by giving me this room, I would go through all our memento boxes and find just a little bit of stuff that we actually wanted and throw the rest away. We had three big mission boxes. I started with the letters.

I sifted through both of our letters and found all the letters we had sent to each other. I then put them in page protectors in a binder in chronological order. We both would wait for the other's letter to come in the mail and respond to that letter instead of just writing regularly, which now makes for good reading.

Fellow Mormons do not worry. We were very appropriate in our letters, and were not romantic at all. I have the proof. However, there was a gentle suggestion by both of us that we...well, we really got along and needed and valued each other's friendship.

Dustin apparently knew that he wanted to marry me before leaving the MTC. He wrote in his journal "who ever marries Sister Thulin will be a lucky man." And confesses to praying to know if I was the one he was going to marry in his first couple weeks out. He felt like he got a confirmation that he would, which relieved him, because he could now stop thinking about me since he now knew it would all work out like it should.

I didn't have these revelations....(this is me, who cut my hair VERY short before my mission because I thought to myself that it was the perfect time to experiment since I didn't have any guys to impress for the next one and a half years.) But I did feel like I had known Elder McKay forever, and that while in Virginia, he was the one person I could relate to and count on.

When we were both home, we of course sent emails. These were not so plutonic. In fact, admittedly, over time they became VERY sappy. I had printed all our emails out when we were newly weds....of course I did, I'm so sentimental...and so now I put these in the same binder with our mission letters.

Going through these letters was quite the wonderful experience. I did it while Dustin was away for a few days doing service for the church with his brother-in-laws. That was probably a flaw. It made me miss him terribly.

Those letters made me fall in love with Dustin all over again. Especially the plutonic mission letters. They were filled with the spirit, and showed how much we needed each other even in the beginning.

Dustin had sent me a pacage for Christmas with a few Veggie Tales stuffies in it while on our missions. I just love it that our third child is in love with these stuffies. It just shows how our love has evolved.

More then anything, I realized, that although our love now is so different then our love then, it is deeper and stronger then ever. We are truly in love. We even like each other too. :) He still makes me laugh, and I still reach for his hand. I am in full confidence that Dustin adores me. He has just recently started to say sometimes "look around; you are the most beautiful girl here." He's sentimental and sappy too, and I love that.

I'm glad that we don't need to write to each other to communicate now, but I will always treasure my binder of priceless love letters.