a little bit of history.

warning: this post doesn't have a picture and is pretty long, but i think it's a good story because it's our story. allyson's cousin was over last night and this story came up. since it is the month of love and i don't normally get into it, i thought i would make a little more effort this year. many of you that know us well, know that we met as friends 9 years ago at ricks college. we really were best friends despite people saying we were more. after one semester of hanging out, allyson transferred to byu but we kept in touch. after that winter semester, al even came to visit me in virginia for a whole week; our parents must have thought something more was going on, but i promise we were still just best friends. the end of the summer rolled around and i left for the singapore mission. it was at this point that things started to change.

there was a girl who was "writing me" that i also met at ricks college; i honestly saw no future with us. i'm not going to give the details because that is a long story for another day (stop laughing paige and megan). needless to say, i wrote that girl and told her it wasn't going to work out. she got married shortly after. i share that with you because that is the moment that my friendship with allyson changed.

we kept writing as friends, but we both realized that there was something there. we still didn't talk about it; wrong time, wrong place. so we waited. allyson found out towards the end of the mission that i was going back to ricks, which meant more long distance. she was upset and ended up writing "the letter" that spilled all of her feelings for me; in it, she called me her "weakness". i've never been called someone's weakness. after she sent it, she waited and waited and waited for my response. i never responded. i never got that letter.

al tried to find out the status of receiving that letter by asking me about other things she wrote about in that letter. i didn't know which letter she was talking about. so, much to her relief, she concluded that the letter got lost in the mail and we could move on. meanwhile, our friendship continued to progress.

i came home and things between us were great. we started dating about a month and a half later. still no mention of "the letter". christmas time rolled around and we were closer to getting engaged. we both made meaningful gifts for each other. al made me a book of our letters on my mission. as we looked through it, i came across a page that had the words "the letter that never came" written in big letters.

while al was preparing the book for me, she had my mom send all the letters that i had kept from her. a few days after my mom sent those, she received a package from the singapore mission office. "the letter" was inside. they explained that it had been sitting in the mission office and they didn't know why i never got it. my mom forwarded it to allyson, where she being the one who sealed it was the same one to open it so many months later. i don't know how "the letter" went all the way across the world and back unopened, but it did.

we read it together and laughed at how much it would have freaked me out on my mission if i had received it then. there was definitely a reason i got that letter when i did.

we got engaged a few weeks after that and have been married now for four and a half years. we've got a great kid and we both come from families we love and are a great support to us. so there you have it, my shout out to love. happy valentine's day.