Day 5 - A letter to your crush

Dear Crush,

I don't remember the first time I met you, which makes me sad.  I wish I remembered what you were wearing, where you sat, what you said, and what I thought of you.  I wish I'd had a special "feeling", like knowing that we would be together forever.  But my heart was pretty entangled somewhere else and I just wasn't paying attention.  I really wish I remembered all of that.

I do remember the first movie we ever watched together, though - "It's a Wonderful Life".  I suppose that was kind of a "date" but it wasn't official.  We only watched half of the movie, because you had to get up early the next day to fly home for Thanksgiving (which was a new concept for me, to be honest.... fly 2000 miles home for a weekend, with Christmas right around the corner anyway?).  But your mom had just had a baby so you wanted to see your brother.

I knew you were going to ask me out, but I beat you to the punch when I invited you to go to "Christmas Around the World" on campus.  I had bought the tickets long before and didn't know who I was going to take, but figured it would be a perfect first date.  And it was.

Our second date was to Salt Lake City to see the lights on temple square.  We spent the entire ride up there naming Christmas songs, taking turns back and forth.  Whoever could name the most would win.  You didn't believe me that "The Holly and the Ivy" was a real song, and I didn't believe you that "A Smoky Mountain Christmas" was a real song.  (Mine's a classic; yours: Dolly Parton).

We got married.  Six years ago this month!  In some ways time has flown by, but sometimes it also seems like forever ago.

The first semester back at school was one of your most challenging semesters at BYU.  You took 18 credit hours of chemistry, biology, physics, and anatomy.  It was hard but I figured it was good practice (for me) for medical school.  It was.

After graduation I worked my last 2 weeks at BYU and then we moved to Georgia.  Remember before we left for the cross country drive, we bought a loaf of bread and made pb&j sandwiches with the whole loaf of bread?  We literally could NOT afford to buy fast food the whole trip, so we just made those sandwiches last us for 3 days.  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  And it worked, mostly... we stopped at McDonald's only once.  And we stayed in the cheapest hotels we could find.  I think we rolled into Georgia with literally less than $20 to our names, remember?  And remember when we got lost in Savannah, because you couldn't remember how to get home? :)

Garrett, I have always known that you are "driven" but I didn't realize just how much until I saw you go through medical school.  You worked HARD.  I remember one time at Church, someone asked me a question (I don't remember what it was), but I remember saying, "I don't know, I haven't seen him since Wednesday".  For some rotations you were going into work at 4 a.m., coming home at 10pm (if you weren't on call and working all night as well).  You spent hours on end at the library (I still don't know how you can study for that long at a time).

But, I knew it was all for a bigger purpose (other than becoming an M.D., that is).  From the beginning of medical school, you promised me that if we sacrificed now, it would pay off later on (not just monetarily).  You assured me, more than once, that if you work hard now, if we give up time together, if we sacrifice in a big way, if you got good grades, if you worked long (sometimes extra) hours, then you would be qualified to get into a specialty that would allow us to have more family time later on in life. You promised that four years of enormous sacrifice would pay off someday.

And honey, YOU DID IT!  You matched into your #1 choice in a top program in one of the most competitive specialties there is.  I can't even begin to tell you how proud I am of you.  The future is very bright.  And the funny thing is... when I really think about it, medical school wasn't that bad! (For me, anyway.  Of course I can't speak for you.)  But I think you would agree with me that our life was pretty great during medical school.  We did so many fun things, saw lots of family, and had so many, many friends.  Residency will be hard, but I think it's safe to say that it won't be too bad.

Thanks for choosing me.  Thanks for marrying me.  Thanks for coming from such a great family, thanks for being the dad of our little girls.  Thanks for working so hard, for sacrificing, and thanks for the throw pillows for the couch that you are going to buy me for our anniversary (surprise!). I love you.


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Up tomorrow - What I Ate (don't fall off your seats with excitement!!!)