Letter #1

Dear Mr. X,

Congratulations to the both of us on starting the great adventure that is the rest of our lives together!  This is what I hope to be the first of many letters I write to you, but by the time you read this, I will no longer know you as Mr. X, and you and I will be celebrating the beginning of our marriage.

I have toyed with the idea of writing letters to you for several years now, but it is only as I write this first letter that I see this idea truly come into fruition, and I am glad to be doing this for you, because even though I have no idea who you are at this moment, I really want to capture the parts of me who I am right now so that you can see how God will shape the woman that you are destined to fall in love with during the time between now and the moment you and I make our vows to love each other for the rest of our lives.  And even though I am certain that by now that you probably know about my life in a significant amount of detail, because knowing who I am, I will have told you all of this while we were dating, it is nice for me to know that you will be reading the thoughts and ideas of a woman whom you don't even know just yet, or perhaps, a woman you already know, and neither you nor I have figured out that we belong together just yet.  What's even better is that through these letters, you will one day be able to read about our journey as I fall completely in love with you.  I intend to keep these letters a bit of a secret, not a complete secret though since the letters are on a blog.  However, it is my hope that by sharing these to the public that I (a woman who is not always the best at keeping secrets) can keep them secret from you until this magical day in the not-so-distant future when you are reading this and I am probably on the bed of our honeymoon suite, dressed completely in white with the exception of my beet-red face.  :)

I am from Georgia.  And as you know very well by now, I was born in Arizona but my parents relocated us to Georgia when I was seven years old.  And you also know that, regardless of where we are living now, be it Georgia or Arizona or somewhere else, I take a sense of pride in the places from which I came.  So even though at this point I have not lived in Arizona for fourteen years, there will always be a part of me living there in spirit, and you and I will definitely be making it over there quite a bit in the future.

Although at this moment, I am not in Arizona.  In fact, I am not even in Georgia.  I am actually in Montana, where I have been working for the summer, but I will be in Georgia again in less than a month.

This next year or so is going to be quite a transitional one for me.  I am going to be a senior in college, and in May I am graduating and I will need to find a real "big-girl" job.  It is a frightening time in my life, believe me.  The economy still has a long way to go, despite some recovery, so anyone would be scared at this point.

But I am afraid that these are steps that I must take right now.  The fact is, I am wearing out of school, and I know it.  I have been in school pretty much nonstop since I was five, with the exception of summers.  Still, that's sixteen years!  I am not finished with my education by any means though, for I want much more than a bachelor's degree in Political Science.  However, I need a couple of gap years to gain some work experience, pay back my loans, and figure out which direction I need to take my life in.

I am not afraid in regards to this choice.  God has guided me to this decision and besides, my idea is to go law school, and the average first-year law school student is about twenty-six, and my current ideas would put me at twenty-four when I start law school (if I start law school) so age is really not an issue here.  I just know that I'm not ready yet.  Law school (or any grad school for that matter) is a lot like my relationship with you at this point.  While both are pretty much certain for my future (although then again nothing is ever really certain but still), now is not the time, but part of going for your goals is the journey you take to get there, so I am definitely ready to see what the next few years or so bring me.

I hope you aren't mad at me for turning this into a blog, but I thought it would be interesting to share my thoughts online.  I'm not going to make this too intricate, with too many personal details, as after all I am choosing to be anonymous on here, but it would be awesome to one day look back on this blog and take comfort in the fact that I did this as a means to better myself and perhaps inspire someone else through my journey.

There is so much more that I want to say, but if I went on and on right now I wouldn't have as much to say in my next letter to you, so let's leave it here for now and keep life interesting, ok?

All my love to wherever you are,
Jennifer, the Future Mrs. X