Happily Ever After: The Life-Changing Power of a Grateful Heart (18 page)

I will never forget those joyful words or the abundance of pride I saw in my son’s expression.

After a day of heartache, he had soared above his expectations and met a boy he to this day calls his friend. With their ability to make each other laugh and a shared interest in swimming, ice-skating, T-ball, and being all-around silly, these two little boys had begun what hopefully will be a friendship that will continue for years and years to come.

T
O
B
E(FRIEND) OR
N
OT TO
B
E(FRIEND)

“I didn’t come here to make friends.”

If you have ever watched
The Bachelor
or
The Bachelorette
, you’ve heard that phrase at least once every season. Some resolute contestants start down the fantasy date-filled path focusing all their energy on the road to a spouse, rather than
the road to new friends. As someone who turned thirty during her televised quest for Prince Charming, I get that mind-set—I wanted a husband! The contestants think that if they actively ignore the other participants and focus solely on the man (or woman) of the hour, it will give them a leg up on the competition and they’ll be that much closer to the end of the fairy-tale rainbow.

Maybe. But I say, as with any other life experience, what would it hurt to turn strangers into friends? As Rod McKuen, an American singer-songwriter and poet, has said, “Strangers are just friends waiting to happen.”

Granted, when I first applied for
The Bachelor
, I wanted some excitement, to escape the rut I was feeling bogged down in, to travel, and perhaps most important, to meet some new friends. I’ve never understood the whole “I didn’t come here to make friends” strategy. Yes, everyone is vying for the same person, but by isolating yourself and being unfriendly, you aren’t showing your love interest that you are more dedicated to finding a partner—you are just showing him or her you are unfriendly and like to be socially isolated. To me, finding love in this (yes, unconventional) way has always been about showing your true colors and hoping that the compatibility pieces fall into place.

Granted, in ancient times, when I appeared on the first season of
The Bachelor
, all of the contestants, including myself, were naive. Even though we were explicitly told by the producers that we were in competition with one another, we were still just trying to find our footing in an unusual (albeit luxurious) environment. So we made it simple: when we weren’t out with our bachelor, we enjoyed our temporary lavish digs in paradise, had all-hours gab sessions, and whiled away our days by the
pool with our fourteen new friends (on the first season, fifteen of us moved into the mansion after the first rose ceremony).

In the most recent seasons, I get that it’s not that simple. Many of the participants come into the process with a one-track mind—they want to stroll off into the sunset with a Neil Lane diamond on their ring finger. They want to be the next Ashley and J.P. or even Ryan and Trista. Since it’s not just them and their potential soul mate going through the courtship process as they would in the real world, this naturally causes a bit of drama. And I’ve never seen a producer fail to give existent drama a little nudge in the even-more-drama direction. After all, it’s the producers’ job to create attention-grabbing television and use anything they can to get America and the world to watch, even if that means encouraging rivalries, as opposed to allegiances, among the competitors.

The contestants think: Why make a friend with someone who is supposedly my enemy?

My response: Why not?

Even if you go on the show looking to fall in love, falling into like with some new friends isn’t such a bad thing.

I can attest to that.

More than eleven years after we said our televised good-byes, there are four girls out of those fourteen original roommates I still call my friends: Shannon, Amy, Angelique, and Christina. That’s pretty good odds. Each of them has gone on to find her own happily ever after in Texas, England, and California, but I will always look back at the laughter we shared in that big ol’ beautiful house on Zuma Beach and be thankful that those women were with me. None of us won the heart of the man we all were vying for, but I’d say we all came out winners.

T
HE
P
OWER OF
H
OPE

When I announced to my friends, family, and fans that I would be writing this book, the congratulatory messages I received were a very sweet, and welcome, surprise. Some of the most cherished notes came from loving friends who reached out with personal words of thanks. One of those friends was Amy Madden Copp.

Amy is a longtime friend of the Sutters, and when I became a Sutter myself, we hit it off and I felt lucky to then call her a friend, as well. Amy is a fun-loving and kind social butterfly with a happy soul. That happiness was temporarily threatened, however, when her attempts at becoming a mother proved to be more difficult than she had expected.

Her spirit seemed indestructible, but early in 2009 she shared with me her struggles, which created an immediate bond of commonality between us. I told her the story of my own disappointments in trying to conceive and that, just like me and millions of others, she should never give up hope.

She never did.

On August 25, 2009, she gave birth to a beauty named Maddy Noel.

Three years later, when I announced that I would be writing a book about having a grateful heart, Amy wrote me this message on Facebook: “Congrats, Trista! This is exciting. I think of you often when you encouraged me to keep trying for a baby. The miracle that is Maddy is a result of encouragement from my friends and your positive attitude that day! Gratitude all the way around!”

Although I humbly accept that I played a teeny-tiny part in her unrelenting resolve to continue moving forward toward
achieving her personal dreams, I have it on good authority that the birds and the bees and a higher power played the predominant role in her pregnancy. I think it’s also fair to say that, without an already mostly positive attitude toward life and the support of her wonderful family and friends, my conversation with her that night would’ve had a good chance of falling to the wayside.

Many who endure the pain of unanswered prayers aren’t as lucky as Amy. They feel alone and ignored. They don’t have the self-confidence to believe in the realization of their life’s goals. They have no hope.

Some may say and have said that that’s a good thing. Take Sophocles, a Greek playwright, for example. He believed that human suffering was prolonged by hope. And the philosopher Plato thought that hope was a “foolish counselor.” Well, I’m not an ancient Grecian, a legendary playwright, or a brilliant philosopher, but my simple thought is that without hope, we are hopeless. I’m happy to be the kind of person to encourage hope in my friends and vice versa. With the help of that encouragement, I’m able to live a life of optimistic possibility, rather than bleak impossibility. I’d say that’s a much better scenario, wouldn’t you?

Science thinks so. In studies conducted by the late C. R. Snyder, an author and professor of clinical psychology, it was found that hope is directly associated with increased coping skills, improved performance in academics and sports, and higher levels of self-esteem, satisfaction, optimism, meaning in life, and happiness (even taking into account genetic predispositions for success in these areas).

So, in my logical mind, friends encourage hope, hope fosters happiness, and happiness inspires gratitude (at least it
did with my friend Amy). Just one more reason to never give up hope and to always cherish your friends.

L
OST . . . AND
F
OUND

On December 24, 2012, I sat in the huge new barn at 4 Eagle Ranch in Wolcott, Colorado, intently listening to the Cowboy Christmas sermon by our friend Pastor Tommy Schneider. Pastor Tommy has such a way with words that he could probably tell me about how paint dries and I would be fascinated, but I think most of the hundreds who joined me that day will agree that the story of Reject, the buffalo, stood out as particularly captivating.

I hope you like it too. . . .

On an especially stormy, lightning-filled night on a private Colorado ranch back in 1991, a baby buffalo was born. Whether it was the traumatic weather or the mother passed out and woke up to an unrecognizable calf, we’ll never know. For whatever reason, he was abandoned—first by his own mother, and second by her herd, which followed her lead. Had it not been for the knowledgeable ranch hands who expertly intervened that night, the young buffalo wouldn’t have needed a name, as he very easily could’ve died that day . . . either due to the lack of maternal protection from outside predators, or the natural tendency of a herd to kill an animal they think of as an outsider. Instead, the people at the ranch kept him safe from harm and from that day forward, he was known as Reject.

Until he was about six months old, they bottle-fed him, but then he simply became too large for them to handle, so the nearby 4 Eagle Ranch accepted him as part of their clan.

Right around the time Reject turned a year old, he was put in the same pen as another animal his age—Snowflake, the horse. With an injured leg, Snowflake could never be the trail horse they had planned for her to be. Instead of selling her, though, they decided to test the waters by putting the two lonesome animals together, and it was magic. As DeWayne Davis, the ranch’s general manager, explained to me, it is
really
unusual for a buffalo and a horse to bond, but that’s exactly what happened. “They are pretty much inseparable.”

And that’s the case with just about any animal that happens to be sharing space with Reject, be it a goat, a burro, or an alpaca. He has found friends at 4 Eagle Ranch, and in return they have found a protector. As is usually the case in that neck of the woods, coyotes are a big problem, preying on most of the animals that call the ranch their home, but with Reject keeping watch over his friends, the coyotes don’t show their furry faces.

As Pastor Tommy said at Cowboy Christmas, Reject had a purpose and a reason for suffering. He found his way to 4 Eagle and Snowflake and a happy life playing guardian to his diverse group of buddies. As Anaïs Nin, an American author, said, “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

Yes, Reject is a buffalo, but we can all learn from his path to unlikely friendships.

F
URRY
F
RIENDS

What is the definition of “friend”? The Merriam-Webster online dictionary says: “one attached to another by affection
or esteem.” In our household, we would expand it to say: one attached to another by affection or esteem
regardless of species.
If they walk on all fours, like to play fetch, have a tail, or are covered with fur, our pets earn the title of friend quite easily.

Since I’ve been with Ryan, we’ve always had a fur baby in our home. Whether cozied up for a nighttime snuggle, greeting you at the door with a wagging tail, or playfully nudging a chew toy your way so you will start a game of tug-of-war, our dogs are always there for us. That is, until they aren’t.

The blogs below were written for
Buzz.Snow.com
in November 2011—the month our thirteen-year-old Siberian husky, Natasha (aka Tosh), took her last breath. The first is by the talented writer I call my husband, and the second was written by me. Different in content, they both depict the genuine appreciation we felt for the time Tosh gave us here on earth and how she will always be with us, as a true friend should.

Lessons from a Snow Dog

by Ryan Sutter

Thirteen years ago, I met my dog, Natasha. Thirteen days ago, I said goodbye to her for the last time.

I had no intention of getting a dog when I first met her. I simply saw her for sale on the side of the road and, without thought or hesitation, added her to my life. In turn, what she added to my life would prove to be the guiding principles from which my current philosophies and attitude were crafted.

Dogs are special creatures. Their presence in life is the root of both profound happiness and sadness. Living almost
exclusively for the moment, a dog’s love is undiluted by the past or future. Natasha saw me through the most turbulent and tumultuous times of my life. Never has there been a period of more profound change than the time we shared together. Yet through it all, she remained loyal with a patience and calm that would seem condescending were they not rooted entirely in love. Her adventurous spirit fostered my relationship with the mountains and secured them as the place I now and forever will call home.

Natasha was a source of security and comfort. When we hiked, she would look back to make sure I was still coming and OK. Her ability to ensure safety without an overbearing concern for the possibility of danger has been incorporated into my parenting techniques. Her ability to summon energy and enthusiasm despite her age and pain is the source of inspiration that solicits my many varied escapades. The comfort and solace I seek and feel in nature echoes her wild spirit and channels the love of the outdoor lifestyle we both shared. Natasha’s simple notions reflected her pure understanding of life and provided a constant source of stability to my often wobbly existence. Her obvious love of the Vail Valley cemented my residential fate. I am here because of her.

Dogs speak in a language of action not words. They cannot lie. Their eyes are truly the windows to their soul. I will never forget the life reflected in Natasha’s eyes. Nor will I ever forget the day that life left. A dog comes into your life, makes it better and then leaves. Though I miss her profoundly, I am forever grateful for the happiness she brought. My life is better for her having been in it.

Trista Sutter Says Good-bye to Her Best Friend’s Best Friend

by Trista Sutter

As a gift for my husband, I once had our Siberian husky, Natasha’s, image put into a photo frame inscribed “The Love of My Life.” After all, Natasha had been there for Ryan during his most tumultuous times. She had an unbreakable and beautiful bond with him that I could only hope to share, but when I first met her, I didn’t know if she would ever let me. Granted, their four-year love affair with the Vail Valley had been rudely interrupted when Ryan suddenly (at least in Natasha’s mind) disappeared for a few weeks, and then again when he showed up with a strange, allergy-ridden girl who couldn’t touch her without getting instantaneous hives. Add to that the bright lights and a treat-less camera crew.