Expressin the Good News

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. day.
This day always means a lot to me. You can read more about why.

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Just being here tonight is bringing back all kinds of memories for me, and I'm feeling all kinds of things about soulful communication of God's love and joyful communication of the gospel. I'm feelin the joy of the time I spent coaxing and nurturing that joy and soul in regular people who weren't sure if they had it in them to be loud or even confident in expressing the good news with groove. They'd look around, like, whoa. This feels gooooood. Is it okay for me to feel this good moving and shaking and shouting with love in music even though I'm white/inexperienced/not a singer/shy? I loved smiling, reassuringly, and letting them know that we are all entitled to groove and joy, that our message transcends all kinds of boundaries. Just because we're white and don't have the history, the generations of water under the bridge--this doesn't mean we're not allowed to love music or culture or a new way to express how we feel about God and the human family.

I'm here, in the Wilk Ballroom, feeling how big it is that musicians practice and have oodles of background and built-up love and history that they bring to the music. The audience has no idea, really. We're edified, we feel good--but we have no idea.This is what I miss about performing.

I saw BYU Singers on the program and I gotta admit I was disappointed. And a little infuriated at first. I was all attitude, like, ohhh please, Martin woulda hated this coiffed-to-perfection-choral-boringness with exaggerated diction and an impeccable blend. His legacy was about doing what you believed in the best way you knew how, with or without a fancy degree or special training. He would scoff at this singing that's so manicured and refined, and who in the world thought up this silly idea to have them here! They don't know a thing about this culture or this people or the way music is supposed to be.

But then in the middle of my attitude I remembered what I just thought about being allowed to love things that you don't have any ownership in. And I remembered what Cathy the speaker challenged us to do when walking down the street: saying in our minds to each person, you matter. She challenged us to see the likeness of God in all of His children. I typed that in my phone because I forgot my journ.
 Then I felt sheepish for not wanting to let it go the other way. For wanting to reject the BYU Singers' offering because it was different than mine would have been. So maybe the people in BYU Singers didn't get it, like I was puttin on them. But maybe they did, and they made something to honor Dr. King that was equally as important as my gritty soulful somethin would have been.

I think Martin Luther King Jr. would have been pleased that a group of white classically trained singing kids were honoring him, even if in a form he didn't love as much. Maybe some of those Singers people caught a glimpse of how inadequate their offering was and felt humbled by all they have to learn. But I caught that glimpse about my own offerings of song and love and worship, and felt humbled. And I still felt good and light walking out of there.

And I still want to go to a meeting in our church where I can sing and shout and praise the Lord with all the volume and vigor I feel like. Right now I do that by myself, and I feel lifted.

It.

We find out what kind of baby Baby Schultz is tomorrow.
It's better than Christmas.
I have no preference because it already is what it is and I just want a baby I can stop calling 'It' and give this child a name.
I'm freaking out inside.
I'm freaking out inside.

little one.

This is the baby that is growing inside of me. It will be here on April 28th, they say.
I have a lot to say about it. I've been writing about it a lot, snippets and snaps of thought before it felt safe and right to tell the world. I want to let you in on those letters to my Little One, even though they are up and down and all over the place. This whole deal is crazy, full of so many emotions and thoughts. I'm moving through all of them.
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Hi little baby.
Pregnancy test says you're here, inside my belly, growing away. I love you, but I'm just having a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that you're real. After I sat in this same spot and wrote how deflated I was that you weren't, yet. And now two pink lines are saying yes, you're pregnant. It's such a strange feeling--I expected to be elated, but it's so surreal I don't know what to think. I'm excited, though. I think I'll be more excited when the doctor says for sure, it's happening, you're due on may or june.

I just want you to be here so I can meet you. but when you come, we'll live in a different house in a different city. I'm just antsy for you, and at the same time overwhelmed because i have no idea what to do with you. I'm afraid of small things like i won't feed you enough, whatever. but you are going to be my baby, the baby i made with the man i love the most, and then we will take care of you. we love you, little one.

i'm here again, and today is a day after yesterday. i feel intense and sad and tears are comin outta my eyes. maybe for the love i have for little one, or maybe for the things i don't know how to feel yet because it's only been two days but it feels like a freakin eternity. and will i let little one say freakin?

i have a lot of questions and no one to ask them to.
i don't know what i'm afraid of.
not knowing what i'm doing, needing so very much help?
it's day 2 of officially knowing and i feel helpless. it's already hard to bend over and i already feel uncomfortable. maybe i'm making that up, huh, little one? but you're in there, in a teeny tiny form, right?

it leaves me feeling pretty alone in the world, this whole pregnancy thing. needing people to help me out, wanting advice and the nitty gritty of their experiences, and feeling like i can't tell them because for some reason i'm not allowed.
................

I feel so tired, and it's 8:34. Pregnancy brain is setting in, I'm making this up, and i'm trying to think of all the outlandish things i could crave in the next 9 months.
is this real?
i want to get it, but i just don't, right now.
i can't be pregnant--i'm just brooke.
old people get pregnant, mommy-ish people, mature people, bookish clairish kaylieish people. not free spirits trying to find their place in the world.
.................

I need to say things.
Things about this unborn baby, so teeny tiny, growing inside me every day. Every day I wonder if something will go horribly wrong. I try to have faith that it won't--but in the same breath, I don't expect that it will be all just fine.
I guess I could have the same fear about Jared dying or getting into an accident or something, but I think about how vulnerable this little body is, nested inside mine, hardly anyone even knowing about its existence yet, and I want to give my whole heart and blood and brain to this baby to have, to use, to live!
Oh how I want my baby to live! To live so full and long and happy and free, to enjoy so many rich experiences and the feeling of sand and the taste of homemade meals, the heartache of loss but only a little, and I want to protect this little one from any danger or pain and keep it tucked safely inside me forever.

It's hard, every day, for me to think about Little One not being completely safe. Being so vulnerable to any small thing that could go wrong. It's hard for me to think of not being able to make sure Little One is completely safe. So I guess I avoid, and nurture myself in the belief that this can't be quite real yet. Because I have no way of knowing if my little baby's heart has already stopped beating, or if it will stop tomorrow, or if it will somehow have something horrible happen to it, for no apparent reason or for something I could control.

.................
We walked together and imagined you wrapped up on my torso, little one. We imagined pushing you in a stroller, in one of those backpack things on dad's back.
Your dad loves you so much, little one. He rubs my belly twenty times a day and talks to you. You're only three inches long and one ounce, but OH MY GOSH HOW WE LOVE YOU!
Your dad and I look at each other with love deeper than we ever thought possible because you're coming into our lives. We don't know if you're a boy or a girl baby yet, what your name will be, or for sure where we'll be living when you'll be born. But we know we love you fierce, and we'd do anything for you.
Like throwing up a delicious breakfast this morning. Thanks for letting me get through most of life normally, though, sweetheart.

Your dad is so anxious for you, and so am I! April 28 seems like it will never come. But we're already a family. We're already growing close, getting to know you in the smallest ways. Sometimes I think I feel you, even though the internet says I'm not supposed to yet. We insert you wherever we are: snuggling with us in bed, lying on a blanket in your pajamas, getting ready for a bath. Grandma Schultz already bought you a toy--so many people are so thrilled that you're coming into our lives! It's beautiful to see how this cycle works: parents have empty houses but get fresh new little souls to love, and we start the journey.
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This is today, November 4th, 2012.

Little One!
1. I'm obsessed with hooded towels for your bath time.
2. I love going to stores and feeling all the fuzzy soft clothes and imagining you in them. We decided whatever you are for Halloween next year, when you are 6 months old, it has to be fuzzy.
3. You're not a fan of dessert, like your Uncle Cameron.
4. You love and have always loved: raspberries, eggs, bacon, cheese, and hamburgers. Mom's eating all kinds of things she never loved before cause your growing self wants them.
5. You are growing very slowly. I am so anxious for you! Come faster!

Creating Yourself.

My twenty-third birthday was this week.
I spent the actual day, September the sixth, teaching high school kids, singing in a choir that's inspiring me more than ever, even though it's my third or fourth semester there. We're singin' Order My Steps, and it's bringing back all kinds of gospel choir memories. It's all I can do not to bust out in soulful line of run-filled praise every time--which urge I promptly satisfy on my drive home, don't you worry. I think of Lyndsi Shae and Claire and Niecie, havin' my back at every rehearsal and going out on every 'express-yourself-and-sing-praise!' limb I directed. I remember Niecie telling me that Order My Steps was like her mantra on her mission, and she asked God for it often, that it was important to her. I remember what a difference I made to people directing that choir.

But I don't direct gospel choir now. It's my birthday. I savor a simple sandwich from Zupa's and people-watch. I walk outside into the dropping rain and see the first full double rainbow I've ever seen in my life, and it's the kind you can see from edge to edge, the way you draw all rainbows as a kindergartener. I smile and say aloud, "Thank you! Happy birthday to me from God!"

It was.
For my birthday, I sang, I taught, I pondered--perfectly reminiscent of the woman I see myself becoming. I'm feeling pretty proud of her.

Don't worry--there was plenty of partying and loving from a few fabulous people on different days. But the exact day I turned twenty-three, I felt more myself than I've ever felt. That's part of my life mission, and it feels good to know that even if I'm not sure how teaching or singing or photographing or writing totally fit in my whole world for my whole life, these things make me feel more like myself.

There's a quote in the office of the room I teach in every day:
life isn't about finding yourself. it's about creating yourself.
I feel that.

Vineland, New Jersey

From a scrap of receipt paper, asked for at a wonderful Italian restaurant in Vineland, New Jersey on July 5th.

I never want to forget the way it felt driving down the E40 today in New Jersey. The sun was getting golden and I drove, for once able to relax without falling asleep. I soaked in slow jazz, let it roll around in my bones as I passed the most amazing cornfields, whooshing past the big white farms with flags waving high. Road that stretched long and just wide enough; greens and golds and sunwashed blacks and handwritten signs for fresh fruit that all made me want to drive a snail's pace and never leave the road.

I want to remember the colors I saw and the jazz I heard while they still ring in my limbs--they turn stale so fast, and I forget why I ever cared.

It's the 5th of July, and for the first time in my life I missed the 4th. It got lost somewhere in Baltimore, or airborne next to a man whose dad is about to die here. That's why he flew in. To say his last goodbyes to a father he doesn't live close to--does he love him, I wondered? There was sadness in his eyes that said yes. Very much.
...
I guess this is what I'd do if I were single, now--go to restaurants by myself and write and eat delicious food while people were weirded out by me--I'd be the person the people watched, like this table of loud east-coasters with Jersey accents next to me. They all have 'usuals' here; pastas and salads and bread and wine; they call the waitress by name even though she isn't wearing a name tag. Vanessa. She's kind and doesn't patronize me because I'm here alone and writing on her receipt paper.

I want to make time for this in my life: quality alone time with myself, mindfully eating and lolling the thoughts around. Sitting, with water pooling in my mouth; I move it slowly, let my tongue go swimming. Feel the life-imparting wetness over my teeth, seeping into my gums, finally swallowing.

So far away from my usual desperate gulps, this way is abundant. It knows there will be enough water to fill my belly and my life, full of oceanic treasure and a fresh spring of great ideas and ample opportunity.

Once, I knew you deep.

There are a lot of unpublished drafts on my side of Freedom. Yes, I just italicized the title of my blog like it is a legitimate publication.

I've been coming here a lot in tiny fragments, and then angry confused tornadoes, and then slowly dripping controlled syllables. None of it fit to show.

I've been trying do describe this summertime, drenched in sweat and water, perpetually sticky, subsisting on a diet of potato chips and watermelon and ice cream and netflix tv.
I've been trying to tell about the way photography fills me up when I feel like it shouldn't; that's what music is supposed to be for.
I've been trying to be excited about student teaching come fall semester, and it is working.
I've been writing little ho-hum sentences that lack luster, and I get frustrated and go away.

I've been rereading my old self--the one who wrote better and longer and loved pens and paper instead of shutters and film developed at Walgreen's. I've reread her fears about marrying the man I am so blissfully married to--and I'd forgotten how scared spitless she was. So scared to make the wrong decision after already making so many...
I've been thinking a lot about lost things. Things and people I once spent a lot of time on and now have nothing to show for it. When we run into each other again there are zero words exchanged that would let anyone believe that once, we invested in each other. Once, we cared really a lot about how each other's day was, and we talked about politics and dream vacations and music that changed our lives. Once I knew you deep, and we spent hours we would have otherwise slept up talking, on the phone or in laundromats or in our tiny apartments.
And now you're a hippie bum in China,
you're a polished married man,
you're a mother of two babies I don't know at all,
and you're...
gosh, I don't have a clue in the world where you are.

I don't regret that I don't have any reason at all to talk to you or her or them--but just wonder where all those minutes and all that energy we spent on each other went in the universe. Did it dissipate into shards of glitter, float up and clump with some corner of the sky, or could it really have only vanished? All that would be left is the minimal brain space we allocate to each other now, once in a blue moon when we pop up on each other's facebook feeds, or are at the same mutual friend's baby shower or wedding or other celebration of love we no longer share, friendly or romantic or any other kind.

Maybe I'd like some placards announcing my accomplishments in relationships: with neatly printed names and timelines, interaction birth and death dates to neatly seal things up. Then, when I wondered, I could wander over to these official things and look and remember over an icy glass of tap water how crazy deep I loved these people, right or wrong or convenient or no.

I've been holding back.
I've been pushing myself.
I have trouble letting old things and people go, and in the same moment
I am the one who snips the string.

the early morning light.

there's something about the early morning hours in the summertime. when the sun wakes up with you and you feel pleasant to meet the day. oh hello, your heart smiles. i feel glad that you're here.

there's something magical about walking outside to a pleasant temperature, being comfortable in shorts and a tee shirt instead of having to layer a silly number of thick fabrics that make you feel itchy, however adorable they look on pinterest. there's something beautiful about knowing your lover for life is sleeping gently  in the other room, while your monkey mind had to wake you up earlier to say things about precisely that.

there is something about running in the early morning light, with cars whizzing past, going to work or the gym or i don't even know where else. i feel part of the world, and simultaneously i am my own.

i spend a lot of time alone these days, working alone, being the sole owner and in-charger of my business. i don't have to roll my eyes at stupid comments people make, because i don't hear them.

but what i do hear is my own voice and thoughts, which can be just as stupid, petty, annoying.

it seems like the most successful people have never gone a different direction. they had their vision right from the start and then just worked hard, bam. but i think that is a lie.

it's also strange to be by yourself all the time when you think of how much other people rely on other people to tell them how they're doing. it's strange to try to get that information only from your insides. you wonder at first if they're wrong, and assume they have to be.

and then you start to realize how much you have inside of you. it's not just organs and a soul and guts, but a lot of strength you didn't know was there. because being a full-time creative is the hardest and most exhilarating thing. I've always wanted 'hard', because that meant i was gettin something killer in return. in return for the hard work. here's the thing, is that some people work hard forever and they never get the killer thing. they realize they need to go in a different direction, and even though that vision is still murky they know they ache for it.

i know i ache for it, is the thing.