six years

(press play... our song)

There is not a river wide 
Not a mountain high 
And neither sin nor evil 
Could change how I feel inside

Could change how I feel inside 

engagement day - July 22, 2006

 Not all the strength of the ocean 

Not all the heat from the sun, from the sun 

Now, others have tried, I just can't deny 

To me you are the one 

To me you are the one 

seeing my "to be" for the first time

 The true love is priceless 

For true love you pay a price 

But there's nothing can keep me from loving you 

Not fire no not ice 

Not fire no not ice 

Like a hero or a champion 
You are the best, you're the best 
Like religion or superstition 

With you I am blessed 
With you I am blessed 

Now the river may grow wider 
The mountain may reach past the sky 
And whether or not you feel same 
My love shall never die 
My love shall never die 

The true love you give and take 
The true love is sacrifice 
But there's nothing can keep me from loving you 
Not fire no not ice 
Not fire no not ice 

most photos by Christy Parry

phish are friends, not food

It was meant to be a surprise, except when my husband found out through various sources that Phish was playing ON HIS BIRTHDAY... IN ATLANTA ... I just couldn't contain myself any longer. I sprung for tickets and told him later when I realized the threat of disappointment was looming... 

I gotta say, I looked forward to this show and this weekend forEVER and for a variety of reasons. One, I had never seen Phish. Jason has, many times. I had seen Dave Matthews probably ten times, Widespread Panic a few times or more, with lots of other great "jam bands" mixed in there between all the festivals and such I've been to. But it had been awhile since a really good show. And Phish, well, that's just one of those shows you don't miss. And I'd missed a few in my youth. And it wasn't going to happen this time. And to be able to celebrate this with my man, knowing how much he loves this band, I wanted to make that happen - to share a memory with him of something we'd mutually enjoyed in our younger days... I was really looking forward to it. 

As the weekend got closer our plans evolved and we decided to make as much of a weekend of it as possible. We toyed around with the idea of getting a hotel in the city to make our commute to and from the amphitheater a little less of a distance and to just "get away" together. The only way that was going to happen was if we got a sick deal... I watched Hotwire for a couple weeks and just kept watching until the day of the concert. After we left the kids with grandma, we found a room in Buckhead for $75 in a 4-star hotel where you'd normally pay $160... um, yeah!? So we did it and to my DELIGHT we ended up at the W Hotel which is a super neato boutique chain with AMAZING rooms, decor, amenities, etc. What a treat!!

We got home, got all of our crap together and got ready for the concert and drove down to check into the hotel. Couldn't believe how awesome the room was... so swanky!! 

here I am, all dressed up and ready to go... 

me and my man, the birthday boy

swanky hotel room!

 We got to the parking lot about 6:30. It was slightly hilarious... here we are expecting to be surrounded by droves of dirty hippies and end up parked between a super new, super expensive Audi and a brand new Range Rover. One of the dudes was a doctor at Emory. Ridic. Anyways, we drank some margaritas and beer, walked around, did some talking about how much we have changed in 10+ years from when we were the dirt foot hippie children running around the lot, and eventually made our way in... Gawd it was so amazing walking in and realizing I was seeing Phish finally, and with my man!

seas of dancing kids

first encounter

hi!

We probably drank too much and GAWD how I wish Jason hadn't bought two waters on our way over to Shakedown Street because we'd have grubbed it up something serious!! We had both developed some kind of super headache and decided to head back to the hotel. I took a nap in the truck on the way back. We had some room service and coffee and went night-night in that super comfy bed....

next morning... parting shot

the W hotel

We had an amazing time together and just enjoyed being together. We need to do more of this but Lord it's expensive! It's expensive but you can't put a price on quality time together. We really needed it. 

Some parting thoughts... being in this scene at one time of my life WAS my nature, my identity. It was a real interesting contrast to see how much I have grown and changed as a person. I felt okay in my own skin, I could see through some of the image and the desire for belonging in much of the crowd that I encountered. Only years give this to you... I used to live to be high, and hate myself the morning after. There is nothing worse than the morning after... and that is all I could think about when I saw many of these kids so effed up. So much desire for belonging to something bigger than themselves and to identify with some kind of community. I have found that in a much more fulfilling and life-giving way through my relationship with Jesus and with Jesus-loving people who hunger for community the way it was meant to be within the church. 

But anyways, great time, great people. Great experience. I'd do it again, in a heartbeat. 

Here's a video Jason took and the set list in case you're interested. :o)

an open letter to my husband on his birthday

Hey baby, 

I have been thinking about all the things I've been wanting to say to you... to have the perfect card and have all the time in the world to sit down and write in it all the things I have pondered in my heart towards you over the last several weeks in anticipation of your birthday and our weekend together... all the things I want to say, but our life right now doesn't allow the time for me to say... all the things I want you to know that I think and feel about you so that you have it to hold onto when we are missing each other, feeling distant and like ships passing in the night, as we are so often right now. 

I am thankful for the five or so years we had to be in the same house, same place, same time... do you realize that? Pretty much our entire marriage we've been working at home together, unemployed together... but together. Now that things have changed, gosh it just hit me the other day how much I miss just being near you. Not many people can say they can be around their spouse all the time and enjoy it, but I really, really love being with you. Every time we have a date night planned I get so excited... so eager to get all pretty for you and have your full attention and to give you mine. More and more I value our time together, even our nights on the front patio just hanging out and talking. Mostly I just love watching you talk about all the things you've been working on and seeing you come alive in a way that stirs my soul.

And I think for this year, that is the one thing I really wanted you to hear from me on your birthday... I am seeing a man coming alive before my eyes... something new and different is happening with you that I haven't seen before... watching you describe the crazy "God moments" that are being orchestrated for you to just walk into, your facial expressions and your smile as you talk about them... the confidence I see building in you that has come from the Lord fathering you, and giving you Gary, who I cannot even begin to adequately mention my thankfulness for the way that he is loving you and "fathering" you as well... Your heart... your broken and tender and moldable heart towards our God... oh my gosh I could just cry now thinking about how precious and beautiful and indescribably awesome it has been to see God working in you. As he keeps your heart soft towards him your strength and authority as a man and a father are growing. What a perfect and wonderful paradox that could only come from relationship with Jesus. 

I just want you to know something and don't you forget this... I AM SO PROUD OF WHO YOU ARE. I AM SO PROUD TO BE YOUR WIFE. I AM SO PROUD THAT YOU'RE MINE, THAT JASON HAMMEL IS MY HUSBAND AND MY BEST FRIEND. I still think you are the most handsome guy ... my heart still flutters when I talk about you and think about all that you are ... you are a better father than I could ever have asked for for our precious children and to Dakota, who you love as your own without question, you are humble and you examine yourself - and that's GOOD, but it doesn't mean your failures outweigh all the good and wonderful things that you do for our children. You've got the bedtime routine down better than I do now. You're amazing. In every way.

I am just so in love with you.

And your wrinkles. And grey hair. I kinda love seeing them both. They are well earned. You are so handsome (gosh). 

Happy 36th year, my amazing, wonderful, adorable, charismatic, handsome, tender-hearted, talented, loving husband. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! You're my best EVERYTHING.

growth.

Oh, hi there. How've you been? 

I am fine. 

I am not really sure what this blog post is going to be about. I am just here, writing.

I am currently listening to Bon Iver on Spotify (through my fancy iPhone headphones, which I just discovered have a little cute mic on the right side so we can talk hands free - actually, Jason and I tried it out just before I hit play), drinking a glass of red wine, across from my husband, whose face is full of expression as he watches Walking Dead on his laptop. This is my brief moment in time where I can write a post; where we've agreed to allowing each other media time to do whatever we want so the other can do whatever they want... hope that makes sense. 

Can I just say, he is so cute. I love his smile. I love his arms. I love his legs. I love him. Lord help me... the way I remember him sitting at the coffee shop when we were dating... legs pulled up into the chair, knees in the crooks of his elbows... eyebrows raised... still boyishly innocent in so many ways... I just love him. 

This past week we've been making an effort to keep the devices off when I get home from work, or after the kids go to bed... it's good. It's really good. I like discovering that actually we do have so much to say to one another when we provide the environment for things to be said. It's all about cultivation and commitment. When you've been together for awhile, you have to be intentional about your relationship. The layers are peeled back... you see the ugliest parts of each other. And when your mate is gone, you miss the deepest and most beautiful parts of them... the longing is intense and profound. It's funny that when you're in each others' presence you aren't able to see these things as clearly as when you were dating. And Jason and I had an intense love and attraction to one another during that time. It was electric. We couldn't be apart. We were desperately in love. And this hasn't really changed... except time wears away at the emotions, so that you feel less of that intensity and are forced to face the depths of the person you're with and to truly challenge love. This is where the rubber meets the road, folks. 

There was a blog post that I wrote and never posted about two or three weeks ago because it was one of those incredibly vulnerable ones, where I really opened up about what was going on in our life; in our marriage. We were in a dark moment... it was like a cloud of confusion was around us and we couldn't shake it. The importance of simplification coupled with intuition and grace during those times for couples like us who have a foundation of deep love and affection for one another and having had to fight to be together and overcome so many obstacles to finally being together is paramount and it helped us get through. I still have work to do. WE still have work to do. But recognizing that the brokenness and pain that sometimes wells up in our marriage most times has little to do with our own issues and has everything to do with pains and brokenness that preceded our relationship. It's hard to get there, especially when hormones are in the way. But practice makes, well, something... so we're working to get there. 

So I guess this post became the blog post I meant to write, but never did. 

And it's time to get off of this damn thing. I got a good lookin' man to hang out with; to sit on the front patio with and drink wine and talk and stuff. 

Goodnight.

to my husband.

My love,

Yesterday, I wrote down our love story with the intention of posting it on this blog. I read it, and re-read it again, and then I asked you to read it. You read it and re-read it again, and we decided that it might be better just to keep it to ourselves.

We both know that our love story is not perfect. It is not a fairy tale. Our path to here was full of bumps, twists and turns, and the backdrop of our great love unfolding was marked with some pain, isolation, and frustration. When we take a moment to look all of it - how it all began, and what we endured for that season, well, it was sometimes hard.

  But the so hard was so good because we had found each other, we passionately loved each other, and we dreamed of "making it work" with a certain stubbornness that got us through.

And then there were some really CRAZY things that would happen when we were together - I mean, CRAZY, BEAUTIFUL things... do you remember? Things where we would look at each other and go, WHOA, did that just happen!? Like, that insane rain/hailstorm that yielded to a mist covered lawn and a full rainbow in my old backyard, seeing families of otters down by the river playing happily, shooting stars, sunrises and sunsets... just so many things... Things that made us wonder what all of this was all about...

engagement day!

While we sat up in the bed last night, snuggled up next to each other, your head on my shoulder, looking at each other in the mirror across the room talking about how we got to this place, there is no doubt that it was all worth it. I wouldn't change any of it, because now I have you. This is what we wanted. This is where we dreamed we'd be. We've got it now.

Your vivid recurring dreams as a young man of the blonde haired woman that you had to cross a fiery chasm to get to means so much more now, doesn't it?

Yes there are times that we both wish that we hadn't been so stupid and foolish in our younger days... we know now that we crossed paths so many times, and if our eyes had been open to one another, maybe our path to each other might not have been so hard. But we know also that we weren't ready then... too stupid, too foolish, we might have squandered something so precious, something we now know, only because of the heartbreak that we individually experienced, was not something to treat lightly. A love like this, most people only dream of. We have it. It's what got us through.

I'll never forget the day that hope arrived for us. When your new boss at your new job began to share his own story of love and marriage, and how it mirrored ours up to that point. I'll never forget the phone call - you from work on your lunch break to me at work on my lunch break, you telling me about the path he'd walked, and how it encouraged you that we could do the same... Finally, it seemed too that this could really work. We could be together. It would just take perseverance and love. Sweet love.

Something we're not short on.

Baby, to say that I love you doesn't say enough these days...


You are my life.
You are the man who holds me up, and brings me back to life.
You scale all my walls and bring them down.
You can make me crack a smile when all I want to do is fight that very thing.
You love our children better than I ever could.
You exhaust the best of yourself trying to make our oldest into a man.
I love to bury my face in the crook of your neck and smell you... it is such a comfort to me.
I love how you make everyone feel safe, welcome and warm.
I love your corny jokes and the crickets that usually follow.
I love how gentle, kind, and tender you are.
I love your smile, your wrinkly eyes, and your salt and pepper scruff.
I love the way you wrap your flowers before you give them to me.
I love your love letters - they are treasures to me.
I love your soft spot for sappy love stories.
I love that you try.
I love your earlobes and thinking about how long they will be one day when you're old. I love that I will be there to see that, God willing.
I love our life together.
 I love dreaming with you, and I cannot wait until we find ourselves on top of mountains again, in wide fields, free and alive... and for now, you're my partner and my friend... my BEST friend, through the day to day, and I couldn't be more content than I am now. I. love. you.

Love Brooke
xoxoxoxoxo

PS: I can't wait to hang out tonight! :o)

we interrupt this program for a VENTING SESSION

I hereby accept this opportunity to complain. If you don't want to hear it, then stop reading now. There aren't any fancy pictures, videos or whatnot. Just me on a rant.

Ya know, I was thinking earlier this week, I would write a seerrries about my birthday coming up... and thinking about, oh, all these things I hope to do better in the next year. PFFT is all I have to say about that right now. Oh yeah and you know what else I had up my sleeve? Well, last night I put together my MEAL PLAN for the next couple weeks, and did my grocery list, and planned to talk about how you could feed your family for such and such amount for such and such a time. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFT.

Guess what people.

Today SUCKED!

Oh there was a lot more that happened that I'll refrain from discussing here because it's just too complicated. But I will share about this afternoon. You know that food I was going to buy for the next couple of weeks and tell you all about? Well, I got to the checkout with it today... And some of you may know this, and some may not... basically, we are beyond just struggling financially... we are swirling down the financial drain. The only income we currently have is from my husband's side work and my Etsy shop, as well as some side work doing cake decorating for other small business owners (trying to get a job with a bakery in town... waiting oh so patiently for a call back). My husband is employed but in a commission only job that he had to take a leave from to make some money - good money, but then my unemployment benefits ran out, and I chose not to try to go for more because I felt convicted about it (since I am not aggressively looking for work with an infant and all)... and now his side work job has run out... He is trying to get the ball rolling again with his sales job (which will be his career and our bread and butter), but that doesn't pay the bills that are currently at hand. We are on every possible government benefit right now except for Section 8. Our house is on the market, but we may lose it before it sells. We went from being a SIX figure household to being a ZERO figure household.

So the food stamp account is usually replenished on the 5th of every month. I have been checking our account  online because TWO WEEKS AGO I sent in my renewal application and if they need anything else they are supposed to contact me to let me know. Well, today, I got to the checkout with my groceries. And my two kids in tow. And $40 cash I had from selling a stroller, so I could buy baby wipes and trash bags. And Shiloh a treat for being a good girl in the store....

Well, the food stamp account had not been replenished. So, at the checkout, I had to leave my groceries and walk away. With a line behind me. What a friggin' great feeling that was. Then, I got home to find the list of crap they needed from me in the mail, and oh yeah in the meantime, they have decided to suspend our food stamp account until they get all that stuff from me. Thanks for the notice, ladies.

I was there at Target because I'd received a $30 gift card for my birthday, and I was excited to buy something for myself and get to shop a bit, since this is such a rare thing these days. I ended up using part of my card balance to buy the things I needed, versus something I really wanted. That really sucked!

Add to that I am supposed to be having a "party" this Saturday... on my birthday, that I am not sure I can afford. Not to mention to that my sons' birthdays are the following two weekends. How the hell am I supposed to manage this? Am I just living in denial?

Tomorrow morning, I get to get up and go straight to the WIC office to try to get my two little ones back on WIC. Noah is right now, but Shiloh isn't. This is after this food stamp debaucle... and oh so exhausting to think about. Trust me, I am thankful for the benefits, but I so wish we didn't need them. I am so tired of jumping through hoops to keep them too, but I will do it because we simply cannot survive without them right now.

It's really hard for me to think about the future, the next year of my life and things I want to change, when I am having to learn to not think too far into the future and just accept each day for what it is, for all it brings in and of itself, because to look so far into the future causes me such anxiety. Right now, I am learning to cope with the daily stresses of parenting three children, keeping the house in order, myself in order, and my marriage interesting. After over two years of me not working, and one year of my husband not working, we had been doing okay, and the stresses of money and the lack thereof have not really affected "us"... but lately, they have been. And I find myself worrying about whether or not we are going to sell stuff on craigslist just to pay the gas or electric bill. I am trying to find ways to make money creatively, without having to just jump back into the corporate world, which is far less secure, much easier to get stuck in for life (not something I really want to do again), and just not my style. However, necessity will eventually lead me there if things don't change soon, and I am open to just about anything. I hope that this opportunity for my husband to find himself and a career of sorts will yield some return ... which is why I don't feel like I should jump in and take the reins. So, yes, I am venting, does it suck sometimes, yes, and a lot more lately. But do I cope, do I cry, do I take it a day at a time? Yes I do... all of that. And drink a glass of wine at night.

So now I am tired. I cannot think of an appropriate close. Here I am, raw, exposed, and vulnerable. Love me or leave me, but I am going to bed.

love B.

happy anniversary # 5

then...

and now.

...and still so much in love, still so many dreams left to see fulfilled, adventures left to take together... children to raise, laughs to be had, long talks, long walks, fresh air to be breathed, new vistas to take in, wrinkles to develop together (we have a few now, don't we?)

You're my dirt-foot partner in crime, my (future) travel buddy, soul mate, best friend, my longing fulfilled.

Happy Anniversary # 5 to my sweet husband. I love you more than ever.