Honest Tuesday

So this isn’t really lifeonthebeech anymore, is it?

I’m trying, folks.

I am changing.

Isn’t it always true? Why does it have to be hard and painful sometimes? Why do I want to just keep on complaining?

Honest: Music is all that’s on my mind. When I go to write, it’s all that comes. But I am awful at describing it. I just want to make you all listen! So that’s why I’ve been quiet.

More honest: That and a hundred hundred more reasons that are too personal.

Let it be, let it be.

More honest: I don’t have time or energy to write anything I’m remotely happy with. I complain pretty much every day.

But, some easy listening for you: OUR MARRIED BLOG. Yep. It’s (almost) like a normal married person blog. Like, here are pictures of what we do with little descriptions, the little goings on, fluff fluff fluff.

So, yeah. I’m letting it be.

Morning.

I woke up bouncy this morning.

I popped out of bed this morning. This morning, I took an invigorating shower with an amazing loofah. This morning, I wrote the word loofah because I like it so much.

This morning I observed by myself,  my first official music class. It felt really good to be there, official, this morning, and have the teacher say, “these guys sitting down here are BYU students—they’re going to be music teachers.”

After my eyes adjusted to the dark I felt happy about leaving the house at 7:05 am. I felt alright that I hadn’t totally finished my homework. I felt alright about taking two peaches but no sandwich (lately, a sudden LOATHING of sandwiches has come over me.) Our house is freshly painted and our bed has pillows on it.

I looked at my husband pulling his belt through the loops. “Dang, boy, you fine!!” And we did a little dance. Sometimes I resent the “my husband is so great I’m going to blah about it all the time” syndrome. But I’ve caught it, peeps. He is so good looking and so supportive (remember, we’re leaving the house at 7:05 am) and such an incredible leader of our home and he makes me a better person and cuddles me and cradles me and lets me fall asleep while he fills out my FAFSA. We’ve been learning about how Langer says humans have troves of knowledge—actual knowledge, not just feeling—that don’t even lend themselves to words. That’s how it is for me with my sweet husband. We have bunches of knowledge about, for, of each other—this wimpy paragraph? It doesn’t make you understand.

We all have what Langer calls an inner life. (I love her. I lover her.) The inner life is the stuff you were thinking as you walked to school today. Was it words? It could have been. Nevertheless, it was knowledge. And what do we have that teaches people to pay attention to their inner lives? School doesn’t do that. What do we give developing citizens (kids) that teaches them to be emotionally intelligent? Music. Experiences. Even this is beyond my verbal capacity to explain.

It’s cool to have someone say what I’ve felt my whole life about music. That it has inexplicable power over people because it addresses that inner life that other stuff doesn’t.

So, back to this morning: husband. belt loops. 7:05. He is amazing and now you know why I cannot describe it.

Okay, summary if you’ve been skimming: I suddenly hate sandwiches, my husband is hot, and I’m going to be a music teacher because of things I can’t describe and I accept that.

Brooke Schultz here.

Brooke Schultz here, just to say some words to you.

Marriage. Awesome. Totes recommend it.

Honeymoon. Amazing. After cooking and steaming in the Puerta Vallarta sun for seven days, I felt completely unprepared to face fall in Utah. Goodbye beach, resort, incredible shower. Goodbye taxi drivers and rain storms. I will sincerely miss you mucho.

Condo. Messy. Neighbors. Smoky. Bed. Awesome. House. Home. We have an instrument nook; I have a multiplicity of cookbooks and no oven racks; I feel like all I want to do is be a prim housewife and cook and clean all day; what the heck. Maybe just for a couple of days, eh.

School. WOW. Trying as hard as I can to have a good attitude about my 2 credit class including 3 hours of class time and 9 hours of practice per week, my other 2 credit class 6 hrs of practice per week. Some days my attitude is better than others. I have a feeling there won’t be much blogging this semester.

I have never prayed so much in my life—that’s partly why I know this is the right major for me. It requires so, so much humility, strength, growth, energy—all of which I personally do not have enough of. So I pray a lot. Sometimes my prayers are just please, please, please. I think God understands.

Also: Women’s Chorus. Cool, huh? I’m excited. Some days I have to readjust my attitude about that, too—1 credit and 5 hours of class time per week. Plus performances every month. I figure, with all this practice and homework, I am going to be AMAZING at what I do, right? Right.

Gospel Choir. WANT IT. Time doesn’t really want me to have it so much, though. I really want to plug through and do it because it is my love. I will keep you posted.

Husband. Hot. Every time I see him I am just like “WHAT! THIS IS AWESOME!”

AND IT IS AWESOME. Our lives are awesome, people. No matter what, they are.

Last thing: be on the lookout for our married blog. heh. so like, when we have babies and stuff they can have their cutie little faces all over that thing.

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.