Communication

For as long as I can remember I have always loved sending and receiving letters.  Every year that I went away to summer camp, I came back with at least one new pen pal.  Wether I was sitting down to write thank you notes after my birthday or sending a handwritten update to a friend, I have always been an enthusiastic letter writer.  Given my love for written communication, It should be no surprise that when Shawn started sending me emails while we were dating, I was instantly captivated.    It didn't matter what the content was, just the act of seeing his email show up in my inbox made me feel cared for and valuable.  To this day, those emails are one of my favorite parts of dating because they represent so much intentionality.   The time, the effort, the stories relayed and the feelings shared were intentional.  It was sweet, exciting, informative and deeply influential in learning how to love one another.    

After we got married our emails to one another still trickled in but we had less need for them since our access to one another greatly increased once we were living under the same roof.   Becoming parents made our occasional emails to one another even more infrequent and Shawn's shift in careers paired with Nicole's growing demands caused both of us to give up the practice completely.  We were learning new ways to communicate with each other in the rapidly changing seasons of our lives, but our learning curve was steep.

Text messages and quick phone calls became the easiest way to stay in touch throughout the day but these touch-points were mostly informative in nature and almost never tender.  I want to know how Shawn's doing and I absolutely care about the details of his day but I was starting to realize that we weren't talking or texting long enough to move past the information and dive into the type of communication that nurtured us.  I knew that trying to email each other again was unrealistic given both of our schedules, but I knew that I still needed an avenue to bring that life-giving intentionality back into our communication with one another.  A shared journal was just the ticket I had been searching for.

I went to the store and bought a plain, black journal.  Shawn and I named it our 'I love you book' because it's sole purpose is to communicate love to one another.  We didn't create any rules or expectations around how frequently we would write in it, but one of our unspoken rules is that we take turns.  Shawn wrote in the book last so it's now perched on my nightstand, patiently waiting for me to write a letter to him.  After I write to Shawn, it will sit on Shawn's nightstand waiting for his morning to allow for a sweet message to be shared.

Once the book has been written in, it is left somewhere for the other person to find.  I usually leave the book either on Shawn's pillow or on top of whatever books he's been reading lately.   When Shawn writes to me, he leaves it either in our kitchen or the living room and I almost always find it after I've gotten Nicole out of bed in the morning.  It's one of my favorite surprises.  We don't write to each other often, but having an avenue to dive deep, and intentionally share words of love and life to one another has been really good for our marriage.

What are your favorite ways to communicate?

Love,
Erica