Today is a special holiday WFL Best Imaginations guest post about gratitude written by WFLU Senior TA Brooke. Brooke recently relocated to the Boston area with her husband and their five children. Prior to coming to Boston they lived in Nashville, TN and enjoyed the many beautiful trails and parks as well as many downtown adventures with live music everywhere!

Do you all know the song by Rascal Flatts – “Bless the Broken Road”? Do you all get misty eyed when you hear it? Well I definitely do, and I’m really not much of a crier but man it gets me every time. In fact just reading through the lyrics a bit before writing this post had me choking up a bit. 🙂

We ladies on the Dream Team like to get together once in a while outside of our business meetings to get to know each other better. We have quite a few new members so it’s lots of fun to bond together on our own time and strengthen our sisterhood in Wife for Life. At our last get together we were sharing about how we came to meet our husbands.

And WHOOSH! I was flooded with memories of my past life before I met my man. I lingered on these thoughts for many days about what all and who all I had gone through before meeting the one that made me feel so different from the rest.

I love these verses in the song,

Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like Northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

I think about the years I spent just passing through
I’d like to have the time I lost and give it back to you
But you just smile and take my hand
You’ve been there you understand
It’s all part of a grander plan that is coming true.

I’ve told my husband more than once that because I know now what I have with him, I wish I had saved every last kiss just for him and not wasted a single drop of my love on those other boys. When I was first getting to learn and hear more about his childhood from his siblings it was a lot of fun but a silly part of me felt a bit sad.

I wished and still sometimes day dream about knowing him before we met. He has really great friends that we still visit, and hearing about all their fun adventures in high school makes me wish I was there too.

Sometimes I get a bit carried away in my daydreaming and will share (or perhaps it’s actually over-sharing) these wild ideas about going back in time and trying to meet him in high school or his first years of college, knowing that I would later marry him. (He says I’m being a bit creepy when I talk like that.)

But really. If any of that had happened, or rather, hadn’t happened, would things be different now? Would things be different if I hadn’t had those “Northern stars”? If those other guys hadn’t broken my heart? Would I really appreciate the love I feel today for him? The love I receive from him today?

Probably not. Of course my husband is and would still be so sweet to me. But like I said before, he made me feel different than all the rest ever did. I don’t think I would have been able to recognize and appreciate the respect and love he shows me without those other experiences. Thinking about it makes me grateful for the road that led me to my husband, even though it was not perfectly smooth.

I hope you can be grateful for your “broken road” too. And share your thoughts with your husband! I did. Of course, he gave me a funny little smirk and even called me a bit “creepy”, but I know he loves hearing how much I love him.

Leave a comment and make us reflect: What was the road like that led you to your husband?
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Ramona Zabriskie on Email
Ramona Zabriskie
Ramona Zabriskie, a wife of 41 years, is the multi-award winning author of Wife for Life: The Power to Succeed in Marriage and the celebrated marriage mentor and global educator of the 5-star WifeSavers Podcast, the WifeSavers Education Membership, and the acclaimed one-of-a-kind virtual school for women, Wife for Life University. Turn your marriage around in a thrilling way with her new free ebook, 5 Lies We Tell Brides and 5 Truths That Save Wives.