I had known for some time that I wanted to marry Jen. We both, in fact, knew for a long that a happy marriage awaited us. We only had a few obstacles that kept us from kneeling at the altar: about 3000 miles and the time it would take to finish our missions. I left for the Dominican Republic in November of 1993. Jen left for British Columbia in September of 1994. I would be gone a total of 24 months, while Jen would return in 18 months. Let me save you the calendar math: I would get home 3 months before her. Spending the time apart had its good points, but it also had some stark drawbacks.
We only had two weeks together, in person, face to face, before I left. We knew how we felt, but we didn’t really know each other very well. Sure we tried to fill each other in on our lives real quick-like, but it was a lot of information to disseminate in such a short time. It wasn’t until we started writing letters that we really learned about one another. I knew that she was from Hawaii, but I didn’t know that she lived on the north shore of Oahu, that her dad was her bishop for most of the time that she lived there, and that she spoke a strange language called Pidgen. I knew that she had only sisters, but I had really only met two of them (maybe three) before I left. I knew that she liked country music, but I didn’t know that it was a relatively new fad for her.
She knew that I had not been active in the church for long, but she didn’t know that I had once counted myself a Buddhist. She knew that I came from a big family myself, she even had met a brother or two of mine, but she didn’t know just how cool my family would treat her. She knew that I had played the part of rebel through my teenage years, but she didn’t know about the punk rock band and Mohawk.
Mostly we both were able to learn about how we felt about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we each learned something new from the scriptures, or had a testimony affirming experience in teaching the gospel, we didn’t hesitate to share it with each other. We also reaffirmed our love, often, just to let the other person know that we had never fallen out of love.
Those were the good points. Here is the formula for the bad stuff:
(Distance) + (Bad Communication) = “Dear John”
Yeah, that’s right; I got the “Dear John” with only 8 months left to go on my mission. To be fair, I prompted the letter with a poor-pity-me letter of my own that did not communicate well my emotions. She thought that my feelings for her had died, and did not want torture herself with continuing a unrequited relationship. I tried to write “Dear Friend” letters, but that was not how I felt. In the end we just stopped writing. The last quarter of my mission sucked. It just sucked.
I returned home, went on a date or two, but just couldn’t get Jen out of my heart. We had some unfinished business, namely eternal marriage. After being home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and not hearing from her for what seemed like forever, I did a no-no: I got a phone number for her and called her. We made small talk, and acted like we had no 900 pound gorilla sitting on the loveseat between us. Finally, as were about to say our good-byes, she did what I could not: she said that the letter had been mistake and that she wanted to come home to me. I could not agree with her more: both letters were mistakes and she should come home to me.
On March 28, 2006, on her birthday, she came home…to me. The night she came home I proposed. We weren’t exactly rich, so I bought her the best ring that I could. If you held it up to the light, squinted a bit, and looked real hard, you could see the tiny diamond in its loose setting. We married in June of 1996.
I knew that I wanted to marry Jen. I knew it.
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