buying the yogurt!

okay okay i have one minute.

one minute to tell you.

that this week is SO crazy.

i had a meltdown yesterday. i was crying and then i started laughing. and then these things combined to just create BROOKE ACTING LIKE A TWO YEAR OLD.

so jared laughed and i got upset. (but it was terribly, terribly funny. he is in for a lot more laughter of this sort.)

and then he was amazing, as usual.

and then, as usual, he comforted and soothed me and told me i am wonderful and WE HAVE THREE DAYS AND THEN WE’RE GOING TO BE MARRIED FOREVER.

and then we went and ate free frozen yogurt samples, and bought no frozen yogurt.

IN THREE DAYS, I’M BUYIN THE YOGURT.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

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.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

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.

My brain is jigggggling

1. My brain is jiggling. Does this ever happen to anyone else? Serious—like when you get a twitch in your eye except it is inside my head, and very very odd.

2. OKAY. I’m a glee fan. FINE.

3. Being a glee fan has made me realize that not everyone gets chills when they listen to amazing music. Not that they don’t still enjoy it, but whoa. Didn’t know that. It’s part of the magic of music for me, the electricity it literally sends, the goosebumps it lends. HA! TOLD YOU MY BRAIN IS JIGGLING.

4. OKAY. Here are some engagement pictures. I know, I know.

5. less than a month. no home yet. it’s cool. i’ve got a DRESS. Which I ordered from China for very very ridiculously cheap and everyone told me not to and it is AMAZING. Would totes recommend it to anyone. also a kitchen table and maybe jared is going to build us a bed? yes please. bed please.

BACK TO ENGAGEMENT PICTURES. wooooo.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

jolt

I was jolted awake from the very middle of an awful dream a few nights ago by my alarm. 5:34. At 5:33, I was doing important soul work about stuff that my subconscious apparently hasn’t resolved. I was about to confront the monster; it walked toward me. I braced myself. The alarm shook me out so harshly that I gasped as I shot up in bed.

Last night before I went to sleep I determined to finish the dream. What do I want to say? I wrote it all down. I wrote about bitterness, strong statements, naivete, taking advantage of other people.

Then I wrote about forgiveness.

It surprised me; I still need to forgive? I thought this was in the pile of “issues processed.” But here it comes back, floating in wet, misty black clouds behind turned backs and frustration.

Maybe some things we deal with in some form for our whole lives, and only the perfection of the Atonement resolves them to completion.

I slept the whole night and didn’t finish it. The monster didn’t show up in any of my subconscious streams.

Forgiveness.

We can forgive, but some things? We can’t ever forget. That’s what I mean by the Atonement resolving these things to completion—you can finally forget. And it’s a good thing, like how memories of pricking your finger on an oven wire rack remind you about oven mitts, in the future. Growth comes of it.

You still don’t ever forget.

pseudokids

there was a picture in the mass of moving this round that had no frame and just lots of blue electric tape on the back trying to be a makeshift holder.

julie newman gave that picture to us from her house a really, really long time ago. i remember the negotiation that wasn’t really like a negotiation. she showed it to us. they nonchalantly talked about like, fifty bucks, whatever. julie newman was always excited to see me and always called me things like dollface and honey, but in a way that was not like usual and condescending but so sweetly endearing. she gave me a hair clip with italy on the back and a bear that smelled like lavender when you put it in the microwave.

she came to the wedding and she said she was proud of me, but didn’t know if she had a right to be. OF COURSE YOU DO!! i tell her this and it comes from a place of reality. she has no idea how often i wear that hair clip.

she talks about how her sons are doing a different life route than my brothers, how they are marines and away from her. she says all this with smiles and faith. she has a blonde streak in the front and i love her for coming here to be with our family on this big day after so long away. it doesn’t matter how many months it’s been since she’s talked to my mom on the phone, how many years of height growth she’s missed from cameron and eric—she is in our lives and she has a right to feel proud of the good things we do. we are her pseudo-kids.

every grown up should have a pseudo-kid. someone else’s child they have a big hand in nurturing and loving and bringing up. a kid who came over every other day to get snacks out of your ample sweets cupboard, billowing with folds of plastic orange reeses wrappers and blue crinkles of chips ahoy. or a kid like i was to julie newman where we only visited her every so often, but i would just sit quietly and listen to her energy while she told mom about the latest. i never was big into playing as a child. i wanted to sit and listen to grown up talk more, i guess.

every kid should have a pseudo-parent, too. kids need lots of good adults who can also spoil their dinner, and give them presents their parents would never think of. hug them ridiculously tight and shower them with cheek smooches even if the boys squirm away.

i’m thinking lately about being a pseudo-parent. taking in the neighbor kids and kissing their cheeks raw. julie newman always kisses our cheeks. i liked that.

i liked that.

big numbers about lovin a boy i’m gonna marry.

Hey Jrad boy.
I love you.

I love you times a thousand.
I love you times the speed of light with a cherry on top.
I love you shouted a hundred times over the intercom of the biggest intercom in the world.
I love you enough to fill up that one 600 million dollar screen on that one football field.
I love you every breath you take SQUARED.
I love you with enough fervor to start a religion.
I love you plain and simple, like sharing a bowl of Raisin Bran.
I love you a kajillion laps around the Atlantic Ocean.
I love you the amount of seventy million times seven kernels of popcorn--POPPED. (That makes it bigger).
I love you NINE days a week. Take that, Paul McCartney.
I love you sung by multitude choirs of angels all day and all night for a ridiculously long period of time.
I love you up to the clouds and back down to the worms in the dirt and all the animals that live in between.
I love you as wide as the ocean and as high as the sky.
I love you the amount of dollars it takes to give every person in the world three thousand times the amount of dollars it takes to do Oprah's hair every day.
I love you as much as all the animals, vegetables, and minerals in the world. I imagine this is a lot.

It is a lot.

Some of these things I read and I’m like, how can that possibly be real? How can I possibly really feel that? But I totally do. Totally.

I can’t wait to marry you, fiancé.

the engagement.

I’m ENGAGED!!!!

and here to tell you

the whole amazing

story

about this boy that I am head over heels madly

in love with. and also, I am going to be in love with him

for my whole entire lifetime,

OKAY?!

okay.

   

There’s a ring on my finger. It means eternity. Real alive eternity with this person who is the most, the very most

incredible person I have ever known.

 

Jared Schultz? He’s magnetic. When you first meet him, you see those blue eyes and they melt you. You look inside his eyes and see such goodness, humility, and all the things your heart desperately wants to be. Then he will smile at you, with his perfectly formed teeth. That smile comes easy, stays long, doesn’t tire. He will ask you about yourself and put you at ease. He will be genuinely interested. You can tell that he cares about you. His heart is so big and good. He lets me be me, and plus better. The feelings we have shared

Jared boy, he is love. I get to be the recipient of a good chunk of that, and I am so, so…just grateful. These feelings for this person are the biggest and deepest I’ve ever had. 

Nothing is ever going to keep us apart. Not time, space,

or death.

 

 

I am the luckiest human. I get to marry him for all of time and all of ETERNITY on AUGUST 14th.

 

People are really confused about love. Some cynics, some dreamy and blind sap-a-holics. And some of them think love just stops with you and your spouse, if you ever get that lucky. But I have news! My marriage is going to last for all of eternity. The love I have for Jared is going to be perpetuated and multiplied in our experiences together, and, too, in little Jareds running around! AH, what more good could I do for the world??!

My choice in this man is as perfect as I could ever dream. If I could have crafted him myself from the ground up, every feature and weakness and preference—I would have picked the exact nature of Jared Schultz. God is incredible, you guys. He has this amazing way of bringing the people most perfect for our growth into our lives and creating experiences to create these fiery feelings of adoration and appreciation for these people.

 

 

So, wanna hear the proposal story?

Garrett’s open house was the night before and the whole time? Jared and me being just ever so slightly pouty. Watching the gifts being opened with crossed arms. Every person who walks through our door is asking me: are you next? we heard there might be another wedding this summer. rumors. can i meet him? do i need to interview him? And I want to find some ring pop and throw it on my left hand and just tell everyone that I KNOW WE ARE GETTING MARRIED but we haven’t talked all the details so…

and I just have to keep smiling annoyingly and mysteriously.

Sunday. Is he gonna ask me? I am dropping hints like crazy. IMPATIENT. I’ve been waiting forever for this. But he’s casual, and like, hey, let’s go play piano. Okay. I’m trudging around talking to Kaylie and whining about how I just want to be engaged and balahaskjd whine whine. I come back into the room and he asks me to play a song. I start playing and after a while I realize a few of the keys are stopped.

Weird, I think in my mind.

Whoa, what do you think is happening?

This happens every so often, I tell him. Sometimes the keys just get stuck.

I pound down on the broken keys, with, um, great force. Jared lets out a little gasp.

Well, we should see what’s wrong in there!

Nah, it’s okay. It happens all the time.

No, really, you should come here.

He opens the piano, and inside is a ring box.

((seriously, my first thought: that’s weird that someone’s ring box is sitting in there!))

Next thing I know that ring box is open and it’s for ME!

He asked, and I said YES.

Now, we’re engaged.

cool, huh?

:) :) :)