What Is God's Role in Finding Your Spouse?

I’ve come across some varying opinions here on CatholicMatch about God’s role in meeting your spouse.

The opinions range from believing that God has no role whatsoever in whom you choose to marry—as long as they help you grow in virtue—to the idea that your “soulmate” does indeed exist. While I do think everyone generally has sound reasoning on either side of the spectrum, I would like to add another opinion into the mix; one that is grounded on my own experience.

I would argue that regardless of how you find your spouse, when you find that person, God will bless it and confirm it for you. And here’s how I know.

Just after graduating college, I intentionally spent a whole year not dating (aka a ‘dating fast’). When that year ended, I was leery of jumping too quickly into the arms of any man who came my way.

So I more-or-less told God, “don’t let me seriously date any man unless he’s meant to be my spouse… I don’t want to waste my time anymore.”

And guess what? It worked.

A couple months after praying that prayer, I found myself beginning a relationship with a close friend of mine. We had worked together for several months, and he finally got the courage to ask me out. I had casually dated a few other guys since my dating fast ended, but the interest didn’t last past a couple of dates.

With Aaron, it was different. Maybe it was because we had gotten to know each other so well from working together previously, or maybe it was due to his thick Midwestern accent. In any event, after just two dates, he asked me to be his girlfriend, and I emphatically accepted.

The only catch was that he was moving to Kansas and I was moving to Wisconsin. Both of us had been badly burned before by long-distance relationships, so we were nervous, but something about our friendship and newly budding romance made us want to give it a whirl.

9 months later, we got engaged.

On paper, that sounds crazy, right? A long-distance relationship, living seven hours apart, in which we only spent—at most—30 days in person together before we decided to spend the remaining days our lives together. But here’s thing, God blessed it and confirmed it. And not just once, but several times.

Maybe that had to do with my request to God at the beginningof everything; or maybe God just wanted to make it really clear.

One way God did this was by sending me on a business trip to Rome. While over there, I took a day-trip to Assisi. I was so caught up in the peaceful beauty of the day, that my relationship with Aaron was the farthest thing from my mind.

But as I sat in the little chapel in the Basilica di Santa Chiara, gazing up at the very San Damiano Cross from which Jesus spoke directly to St. Francis, God brought Aaron to the forefront of my mind. Thinking it was just a distraction from prayer, I tried brushing it aside.

Yet it persisted.

So I relented and asked God what he wanted of mine and Aaron’s relationship. “Marry him,” I felt the Lord saying to me, over and over again. Well, alrighty then, I thought. The same cross that spoke to St. Francis almost a thousand years ago is now telling me I should marry my boyfriend. Cue the dramatic music.

Not wanting to brush it off completely, I tucked that moment in my back pocket, deciding to come back to it in prayer at a later time.

I also decided to take home a small reminder of it—literally a small version of the San Damiano cross from one of the many little shops dotted along the Assisi ridge-line. I actually pondered getting a cross for Aaron as well, but decided against it, thinking it might be weird to tell him what I experienced there.

A couple weeks later, a woman I worked with popped into my office. I had mentioned to her earlier how much I enjoyed Assisi, and she, having visited there the year previous, wanted to give to me something. She pulled out of her bag an exact replica of the mini San Damiano cross that I had bought as my “reminder.” She left it on my desk and walked away, leaving me stunned. I guess I am supposed to give one of these to Aaron, I thought.

There were other signs and ways God continued to show us both that He was blessing our relationship and leading us to marriage. Of course, our relationship naturally took its course in that direction, too, so these signs in no way replaced our will and intellect in making an informed and sound choice. God will never force us to make a decision—He loves us too much for that.

I realize this is just one story in a sea of many different situations and people, and not everyone is going to have an "Assisi moment" like I did. But I do believe that God will help us find and confirm when we are on the right path, especially if we ask!

One other cool story about Assisi...

That day I spent in Assisi—gazing at that San Damiano Cross and feeling God’s peace and confirmation about my relationship with Aaron—just so happened to be EXACTLY one year before our wedding day, October 26th. That was yet another little ‘nudge’ of encouragement from God when I discovered the correlation.

So whether you’re in a relationship or looking to be in one, don’t be afraid to ask God boldly for what you need. God wants to give us the desires of our hearts! Trust that He will bless and confirm the path you are on if it’s within His will.