Love in the Mail

My Facebook status for today:

Christine Fox Parker

and Mark met in December of 1990, had their first kiss on April 21, 1991, and got married in 1992. Nearly 20 years of happiness! Happy Valentine's Day

This status prompted a few college friends/roomies to comment on those days, which prompted some answers from me. In the end I have a lovely trip down memory lane.

Mark and I met when during the year he was fundraising to do long-term mission work in Croatia, and I was in my junior year of college. We dated for two months before he left, but it hadn't taken long to know we were right for each other. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, more like love in two weeks. 

As the time for his departure neared, we talked more and more about our future and whether we would have one together. We decided that I would spend my Christmas break during my senior year visiting him in Croatia and make a final decision then.

We married two months after I graduated from college. The year we spent apart was very difficult and expensive. It was way before email or cell phones and living on campus I did not have long-distance telephone service. I would go to a friend's house and call Mark at appointed times and then pay those friends when the bill came in. 

The month I spent in Croatia that year remains as one of the happiest memories I have. Christmas is a magical time, and spending it in Europe with the man I loved...well, let's just say it was dreamy!

But the one thing I always tell folks about when they ask about that year is the mail I received. Mark and I both still have the boxes of letters we each saved from that year. More fun than reading them is looking at them all. Mark decorated most of the envelopes he mailed my letters in. Water color paintings, chalk drawings, sketches. His love was not simply in the words he wrote, but in every aspect of sending the letters. And the artistic envelopes did not taper off over time. Throughout the entire year decorated my mail. 

As I look back I see how his faithful devotion through the international postal system was indicative of the kind of man he is: loving, creative, committed, stable. 20 years later his faithful love is still apparent in far more than his words.