Would you wait nine whole years to open a wedding gift? Brandon and Kathy Gunn did.
The couple received a gift from Kathy’s Great Aunt Alison with a note that instructed: “Do not open until your first disagreement.”
Nine years is obviously a VERY long time to go without arguing in a marriage (nine days maybe…) but Kathy explained why it was unopened for so long in a Facebook post:
“Now, there had obviously been plenty of disagreements, arguments and slammed doors throughout our nine years,” Kathy wrote. “There were even a couple of instances where we both considered giving up … but we never opened the box.”
Kathy explained that they were both too stubborn and also determined to make any disagreement work so they wouldn’t have to open it.
“It forced us to reassess situations,” she says. “Was it really time to open the box? What if this isn’t our worst fight? What if there’s a worse one ahead of us and we don’t have our box?!? As my Great Uncle Bill would say, ‘Nothing is ever so bad that it couldn’t get worse.’”
So the couple waited. And waited.
And it wasn’t until they were brainstorming gift ideas for a wedding they were attending, they thought properly about the box again.
They decided to open it at long last and this is what they found inside:
Two hand-written notes wrapped around money — one for Kathy, which instructed her to use the cash to buy pizza, then start a bath. The other note was for Brandon and instructed him to use the money in the box to buy flowers and wine.
Would you have been disappointed after waiting all that time to receive the makings of a simple date night?
The couple weren’t disappointed at all. Why? Because they knew just how significant the box was now.
Kathy explains:
“For 9 years (and three moves) that box sat high on a shelf in various closets gathering dust, yet it somehow taught us about tolerance, understanding, compromise and patience. Our marriage strengthened as we became best friends, partners, and teammates. Today, we decided to open that box, because I finally had a realization. I realized that the tools for creating and maintaining a strong, healthy marriage were never within that box – they were within us.”
Great Aunt Alison was gifting them the greatest gift of all by teaching them important communication tools as a couple.
The gift might not have cost much but the gift of healthy communication is priceless.
