two days ago...

weekend trip to san francisco


finally together.


sunshine state.



i love this boy...

oh life. now i am at home... the farm... parents house... so confusing. england. california. wisconsin. friends. family. caleb. so many places my little heart wants to be. i feel splintered.

time for hot coco.
bek

two weeks ago...

in the countryside in wales...


visiting temby


drinking tea by the thames. something i've wanted to do since i was little.


molly and i in hyde park

on the bench was written "rest with your books and dreams and savor london".

oh england. i miss you.

home

sunshine. tea steaming next to me. bible and notebook. music flowing through speakers. our song. i will walk down the aisle to this song. i will try not to trip. i will stand before God, my family and my dear friends and promise to be his, promise before all that i will love and care for my best friend. my man. my other half.

i am here. in california. it is sunny of course and my skin is already thanking me for all of the vitamin D. it's strange to be back. strange to think that a mere week ago i was waking up in london. my london. oh i miss it. i miss the food and my friends, all of the people and my little tea shop. i miss going anywhere, whenever i want. freedom.

but i am home. i am here. he is here.

smile.

i've bee working on invitations. punching little holes and threading ribbon and thinking. i do miss the freedom. i do miss it. but this... oh this! my future that God has been carefully planning and intertwining with this man for years. he has brought us together and now we are getting married. a new kind of freedom. a new adventure. while modesto may not be as exciting as london i will be with my best friend, my lover, my husband. i am happy. smile. yes.

i am home.

wales and thoughts...

at last the country! at last the cold sea air blowing on my face and through my hair. so clean and cold. splashing around in boots, my little sister trailing behind me, it's hard to imagine that london actually exists out there somewhere. i wore i dress today and it made me feel as if i should live out here forever, wearing dresses and thick wool socks and wellies. it's been an amazing time here. molly and i found wild ponies and fed some not so wild fat ponies in a pen. we are staying with an amazing, older, very british couple. they have been perfect hosts to us. she even offered a hot water bottle for the bed so our feet would be warmer.
maybe i should stay. maybe i should live in a boat house on the coast in wales and write and have babies and drink tea. maybe i should have caleb come here and live. we would be happy in the rual country. just us. together with the wild sea and cold english air.
"oh but california! california coming home. i'm gonna see the folks i dig.... california coming home." oh joni. you have it so right. i am leaving england soon. going back. going home. going at last. going home and then finally to the airport and flying to that sunny state where he is waiting for me.
oh england. i will miss you.
oh caleb. here i come...
bek

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air is trapped in my lungs, suspended in the dark corners within my tight chest. i cannot breathe. i cannot. i cannot cry either, though my heart breaks, though my knees are pulled up to my chest, though my head rests in my hands. weary i rock, back and fourth, trying to find comfort in my own movements. pain shooting through my spine, up into my back, deep into my heart where it stays. my heart. oh my heart! how is it still beating? how have i not exploded into tiny little fragmented pieces, like shards of glass after a window is violently shattered. empty and yet brimming with emotion i am here, simply here, incapable of being or doing anything else. though here i am not really here. though alive, i am not quite solid. i am but a shadow of myself on cold concrete. please. please. i want to breathe again.

gassed.

sunny skies again. i have a cup of hot chocolate next to me and a sweatshirt over my pajamas. i like early mornings. it's only 8:30am but i feel so wide awake. boy and i talked this morning 10:30pm his time, 6:30am london time. we've gotten a pretty good routine down by now, which i guess is pretty depressing when you think about it. no matter. in 20 short days i will be with him again. love is a funny thing sometimes. i am in fast paced, amazing london counting down the days till i go home. i will miss it here though...
yesterday i went to the imperial war museum with my british museums class. i've always been interested in military history, especially WWII. i don't like war, but i know that it is necessary for freedom. since dating caleb, who is in the national guard, my views on war have changed slightly. i think i am more supportive now. i also can't watch war movies anymore. i tired last semester. i got about 5 minutes into the filim saving private ryan(which i've seen) before my shoulders started to shake and tears began flowing. i turned it off. so yesterday i was prepared to feel emotional as we entered the museum. we looked at tanks, planes, v2 rockets and machine guns. we also went into the art gallery and stood in front of the painting below. it was entitled "gassed". the class sat in front of it, their pencils flying while our teacher gave us the history and inspiration behind the painting. i sat in the back of the room, my back against the wall, my knees pulled up to my chest, looking. the teacher soon moved onto what we would be doing next class and had a loud discussion with the my peers about exams and so on. i was upset. everyone was being loud and i was suddenly annoyed. i wanted to stand up and shout "not in here. take your mundane talk out of this room. show some respect!" but instead my eyes welled up with tears and i stopped listening to the chatter around me. i was lost in the painting, in the scene it depicted. i imagined caleb in that painting. i imagined our troops in the middle east fighting and dying so that i could be free. i was very quiet. last to leave the room, i looked at the painting one final time. it seemed so strange to have a painting so huge be so quiet. i don't know how to explain it... but it felt like the giant canvas with hundreds of wounded soldiers on it was so deafeningly silent, a silence that took up the whole empty gallery.
after class was over i went back to that room, stood beneath the giant work of art and cried.
-bekah