Blast from the Past

Have you ever been stressed out about something, and then out of nowhere something pops up and reminds you that what you are stressing about doesn't even matter at all? That happened to me today.

Rex and I have been bustling about, trying to get everything prepared for the beginning of the new semester tomorrow. The house was messy, my lesson plans weren't done, and I was stressing out.

On my "To Do List for 1/9/11" (no lie - the list is sitting right next to me), there are thirteen items. So far I have crossed six of them off. The next item on the list was to put the finishing touches on Rex and I's list of New Year's Resolutions. We made separate resolutions and resolutions that we want to pursue together, and we agreed to type them up so that we can put them somewhere in our house to remind ourselves to follow them.

I was searching my documents folder in Word for the document that contained the resolutions, but I couldn't find it. I started meticulously going over each document, and I stumbled across one entitled "Rex's Happy Letter." Curious, I opened it.

Until now I had forgotten, but in high school Rex and I had the great (really dumb) idea of making a time capsule to open either when we got married or when we broke up (since obviously any dating relationship only ends in one of those two ways). It was a fun idea, but we never actually made the time capsule. The amount of time we spent on this idea spanned about one half hour in my house one evening when I typed my letters (one for if we broke up and one for if we got married) on my dad's computer and Rex used my computer. My dad's computer from back then is long gone and all of the files have been deleted, but the computer Rex used is the one I am still using now. "Rex's Happy Letter" was the letter he wrote to me to open in the event that we got married. He never wrote a letter for if we broke up, which I didn't know until now. Apparently he didn't believe that was an option. Anyway, it was so fun to see how our relationship has changed from high school until now. Reading his letter showed me how careless our love used to be: no bills, no brain tumors, no worries about graduate school, no job applications, etc. It was just me and Rex, hanging out and trying to figure out what that stupid "L" word actually meant. It was really cool to read the letter (I may have teared up a little - don't judge me). I feel like the careless teenagers we used to be still live in us somewhere, but sometimes we get so caught up in the business of life that we forget to step back and just consider how dang lucky we are to be together.

Eighteen-year-old Rex: I love you, too. Thanks for the letter.