Photography: Bradley James Photography

Returning gifts, cancelling plans, pleading with vendors for a refund, thousands of dollars lost, returning your ring – cancelling your wedding is a horrid chapter of life and a very humbling moment in your story. After my last post, someone mentioned how proud I should be that I was able to make the right choice. It was hard to think of it in that light. It was much easier to feel embarrassed that I had made the wrong decision in the first place, it was easier to wonder why I had never seen what a poor match we were before. When outsiders asked how the wedding planning was going, I was ashamed to say that all planning had ceased. “We called it off.” Those words pierced me.

I felt like a lost soul. I had to re-find my single self and remember who I was without him. And that might have been one of the biggest challenges of all.

Skipping forward – how do you know this is the man your supposed to marry? That’s the question I left you with at the conclusion of Tuesday’s post. That was a question that ran through my mind for a long time. I lost a little trust in myself. I felt like my instincts were now off. I could never let something like this happen again.

All I can speak of is my own experience. But for me, there wasn’t even a shadow of a doubt that floated into my mind when the right proposal came along.

In my broken engagement, I prayed for a sign. I prayed for a closed door if this wasn’t the direction my life was supposed to go. Be careful what you pray for. A huge sign came crashing down on me and was so obvious there was not a chance I could ignore it. In my current relationship, of course I prayed for guidance but it wasn’t a scary plea. It wasn’t a prayer born out of fear, it was a prayer of wisdom and care and thankfulness.

So how did I know that I’d met the man I was supposed to marry? Everything was just different. The overall aura of the relationship was unique to any other bond I had experienced. And I might not have recognized that without my past misfortunes. There was a calmness and peace. There was a security and my self-doubt seemed to fade away. I didn’t feel like I had lost myself with him, but rather I was able to be myself. My past heartbreak gave me the confidence to move forward. I now knew what I wanted and who I wanted to be. And most importantly, I knew who I wanted to have standing beside me as I strived to be that person.

There is a happy ending on the road ahead.

“Don’t rush into love, because even in fairytales the happy ending takes place on the last page”. – author unknown