Day 5 - Before I Met My Husband

Thank you for joining us for another day in our Lenten series, “40 Days for Vocations.” This week, I’ll be sharing with you my own vocation story.

Long before I met Andrew, I had thought and prayed alot about my vocation. I had discerned whether or not I was called to religious life (I didn’t look at any specific orders, just took the idea to prayer a lot). I kept feeling the tug toward marriage and family life, but I struggled because I wanted to be holy. And everyone knew that most of the saints were religious or priests. I remember browsing my college library for books about married saints, and being really excited when I actually found one. (My college library wasn’t small. There just aren’t many canonized married saints!) I wanted to reconcile my desire for holiness with my desire for marriage.

My spiritual director at the time was wise, and she told me to wait and continue to take it to prayer. At some point I told her something along the lines of, “I feel like God is calling me to something special...so that must mean that I’m supposed to be a nun.” I struggled with the thought that many people struggle with, “If I want it, that must mean God doesn’t want me to have it.” But God works through our desires. If He places a desire in our heart – a good desire – then it’s there for a reason!

At the beginning of my junior year, a potential relationship had just fallen flat. I was bummed. The guy had been nice enough, and he was a good Catholic guy. But he wasn’t interested in me the way I was in him.

One of my first nights back on campus, I was unpacking my dorm room and watching EWTN, and a show came on where a young couple was talking about their journey to marriage. The woman said that –after a number of failed relationships- she had sat down, written out a list of what she would want in a potential spouse, and taken that list to prayer. She set the bar ridiculously high, and then she told God, “Okay, it’s in your hands now.” When I heard that, I dropped what I was doing, went down to my dorm chapel, and did that very thing.

As I wrote this list, in prayer, I realized that the guy I was previously interested in – although a good guy – was not the kind of guy I needed to marry. I was surprised because, well, the guy I described in my list was very different than the sort of guy I was normally attracted to. Like the woman on the TV show, I set the bar ridiculously high and basically said, “Okay, God. I’m tired of worrying about finding a husband. This is in your hands. I think this is what I’d need in a spouse. I know it is. But these are pretty hard standards. So, good luck finding him...”

And shortly thereafter, I met Andrew.

It feels so surreal, remembering all of this now, and then looking around the room at my daughters playing. It's really nice to be able to see how the story turned out, you know?

Would you like to see what we wore this Sunday? ;-)

But wait! Where's the baby?!

Several hours later (finally holding still)...

Have a lovely Monday, friends!