nine days of thinking.

I’ve been MIA. I’ve been anxiously engaged. (har, har.) I’m getting married in NINE FREAKING DAYS, let’s be real. I don’t have time to blabber all over the internet.

But today I need it.

Hello.

I am thinking about a hundred and fifteen hundred things. I’m thinking about our amazing condo that we are going to live in and it is going to be our house. I am thinking about the wonderful experience that I had last night going through the temple with so many people I love and care for so much. I’m thinking about maturity. I’m thinking about other people. I’m thinking about girls who are so obsessed with image that they spend their whole blogs and facebooks and lives cluttering their world and minds with pictures that prove that they matter because they are pretty or they dress well. I feel sad about that. Not because I am high and mighty and I have never thought the dreadful thought that maybe my only worth is in my body or my looks and I have to make those things perfect to be worthy of love. No, I just feel sad that they don’t have the perspective to realize, even in theory, that those things are not real. They are not lasting.

I work to be comfortable in my own skin, every day. Every day I wake up and make choices about how I will treat this body I have been given.

Lately, we’re friends. I’m going to work to keep it that way.

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I’m thinking about change and leaving your family, and how your parents raise you up to be and think all of these things and still be your own person. How your parents cradle you and nurture you and how you still need your mom to hold you a lot a lot, even at 20 years old. I’m thinking about how the other weekend when I was perched on the edge of my couch waiting for my bridal shower, Father of the Bride was on and I cried like a little baby. I’m thinking about how God knows what we need and how He knows that marriage for Brooke Beecher at this exact time is the path of most growth and He has orchestrated it. I know that.

I’m thinking about teaching my babies so many important things—I’ve started a list. It includes things like, teach them about tact and honesty. Teach them; they are going to fall in love with something—a culture, instrument, plants or science or math. Teach them to nurture this love and not hide it for anything. I’m thinking about how teaching fits in with my life, as a mother, as a wife. How music fits in. I don’t know.

Marriage means a lot of stuff, especially for a girl. I’m just thinking about all of it—playing images and scenes in my mind, getting excited and being unsure in the same moment. It’s all good.

I’m thinking about Katie Harris and what an amazing missionary she is going to be in the TEMPLE SQUARE mission! I’m thinking about all my girls and how I love them, how we will always cherish each other no matter the stage of life we are experiencing.

I love God. He is real. This is what I know. He will take care of me. My life is not good because of luck, or because I have done one single thing to merit it turning out that way. It is good because He has given it to me. It is good because He knows me and knows what to place in my life for happiness.

In nine days, I won’t just enter into a marriage. I’m going to do the most important thing of my entire existence. I am going to enter the greatest practicum of Godhood, the refiner’s fire. I’m going to get to start facing life with my sweetheart in all it has to offer and bring, in love and safety.

The magnitude makes me cry with reverence, awe, wonder. We are going to take care of each other. I know I don’t even understand a sliver of what is to come, and I am grateful for the small glimpse I am given.