Seeing Will waiting for her at the altar was one of Bridget's wedding highlights. To think that when she first met Will online, Bridget worried that she might be too old for him because she was five years older (read about how they met). Luckily, her sisters, who also met their husbands on CatholicMatch, encouraged her to go for it.
The Beginning of Everything
Bridget never wanted to forget the look in Will’s eyes when she first walked down the aisle to meet him at the altar.
“I asked the photographer to make sure she got a picture of his face for me to look back on, she shares.
“It had taken so long for me to reach this epic moment and the road traveled had been difficult. I didn't want to miss a minute of it.”
For Will, their wedding Mass was the best part. “It was awesome for me to have my college friends be my groomsmen since I was the first of our group to get married.”
Bridget adds, “Our wedding Mass was the most beautiful I had ever seen, and I could just feel the blessings and graces pouring down on us.
The joy didn’t stop with the wedding; the couple celebrated the whole weekend with friends and family—they even had a party bus. Later, they were able to spend a week at a resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
Too many pregnancy tests
Like a lot of Catholic couples, Bridget and Will took for granted that they would conceive a child soon after getting married, but month after month came with no baby. “We had taken six months of NFP classes (as required by our diocese), but it never really occurred to me that we might have difficulty conceiving," Bridget shares.
Bridget felt her faith tested because it seemed that God was denying her a chance to be a mom. “It was the thing I had dreamt of since I was a kid.”
For Will, Bridget’s infertility is difficult for him to discuss. “It’s a very personal experience for me. It was hard to see Bridget upset,” he shares. “But we just continued to pray, and I knew that God would send us a baby when we were ready.
Bridget adds, "I prayed—sometimes resentfully I admit—and begged for God to send me my heart's desire.” Then right before Christmas, she went to Confession and bared her soul to God during which she felt a sense of peace wash over her.
Using NFP to conceive
Having watched her
and stopped at the drugstore on my way to work to pick up a test.”
On January 8th, 2017, a year and a half after their wedding, Bridget was so nervous that she dropped the pregnancy test and ruined the results. She bought another test, which she took before starting her work shift. It can take three minutes for the results, so the whole time Bridget was barely breathing.
With her eyes held tightly shut, she prayed hard. When the timer went off, her eyes popped open, and there were two bright blue lines indicating positive results! “I was in shock for quite a while. I went about my morning work and went back to look in my locker at the test. The lines were still there,” she recalls. “It finally sunk in, and I broke down in tears. It was so hard to keep that a secret all day until I could tell Will.”
On her way home from work, Bridget stopped at a store and picked up a baby outfit and put it in a Christmas box for Will. “When he came home from work, I said I had a late Christmas gift for him. His response was all I could have hoped for, and together we thanked God for His great gift.”
Finding out that they were expecting was an overwhelming joy for the couple. “The biggest thing I learned—and continue to learn—is that everything happens in God's time. Learning to let go and let God work is still a struggle, but I keep working at it,” Bridget says.
Baby Kilian is due in September.
Continue Reading
