I wrote this about someone I loved who came from a background much like mine. We were a good match, but their family wouldn’t have approved of our relationship. To this day, we still share a close, unshakable friendship.
The song reflects on loving someone enough to understand what being together could cost them in other parts of their life. Sometimes that love means letting them go on and live their life, even when it means giving up the life you might have shared as spouses. The love can remain, even when the future you imagined doesn’t.
Lyrics
You were raised on Sunday mornings
And six hundred acres of land
I was raised by broken highways
With a steering wheel in my hands
Somehow out there in the middle
Of everything we weren't supposed to be
Two roads that never should've crossed
Found where they were meant to meet
I still love the life we almost had
The front porch dreams that never came to pass
The morning light on a coffee cup
The kind of forever we both thought of
You held my heart, but held your past
Some roots grow deeper than love can last
I ain't mad, I understand
I just miss the life we almost had
You were always more than midnight
More than some secret kept away
You were kindness in a cowboy hat
And peace at the end of my day
I knew the weight that you were carryin'
From a world I couldn't see
Tryin' not to lose the roots that raised you
While holdin' on to me
I still love the life we almost had
The front porch dreams that never came to pass
The morning light on a coffee cup
The kind of forever we both thought of
You held my heart, but held your past
Some roots grow deeper than love can last
I ain't mad, I understand
I just miss the life we almost had
Only five hours between us
But a lifetime in between
I saw the whole of you
And loved the whole of you
Even the parts I couldn't keep
Maybe somewhere in another time
Another road, another sky
You'd take my hand and not let go
And everybody else would know
I still love the life we almost had
I don't regret one mile looking back
Some people leave, some people stay
Some love just finds a different way
You're still a part of who I am
My cowboy, my almost promised land
I ain't mad, I understand
I just miss the life we almost had