In early January of 2021, seeking to date a Catholic with shared core values and encouraged by the success stories of several friends, Maryjacqueline created a CatholicMatch profile. The Montessori preschool teacher from Indiana chose a unique format for describing herself in the freestyle section of her profile: a 12-point bulleted list of her interests and passions. As it so happens, Jacob, a FOCUS missionary at an Indiana college campus several hours away, was intrigued both by the content she included and the format she chose.
He waited a week to message her…for a good reason!
He had been on and off CatholicMatch since 2017, and he came across her profile just a few weeks after she joined. After noting that they had both traveled extensively, enjoyed some of the same books, movies, and music, and each deeply treasured their Catholic faith and sought to grow deeper in relationship with Christ, Jacob knew he wanted to contact Maryjacqueline…but he waited an entire week to hit ‘send’ on his initial message. As it turns out, spending significant time thoughtfully crafting that first message paid off in a big way. Maryjacqueline was thoroughly impressed by what he wrote, recalling “He was just super friendly and all of his questions were super intentional. I felt like it was coming from a friend or someone I could get along really well with. It showed that he actually read my profile and was interested.”
She appreciated his intentionality.
Maryjacqueline commented, “Jacob led it very well.” After exchanging messages back and forth for a week or so, he asked her about doing a video call. Jacob related, “With messages, sometimes you think you have a picture of what someone is like, and then you talk to them [on a video call] and they’re not like that at all.” That first video call lasted about half an hour, and afterwards he asked for another a few days later. That second video call went on a little longer and also went well, and Jacob followed it up with an invite on an in person date. She remembered, “we first prayed a rosary at the grotto and then went out to dinner in town.”
From his perspective, Jacob laughed, relating “I remember driving up for the first time, I was definitely nervous. That whole car ride I was practicing, thinking of things to talk about. Then Jackie was much prettier than I expected her to be- I knew she was pretty from her pictures- and the first thing that I was going to say came out in a jumbled mess!”
They were snowbound after their first date!
While Jacob didn’t know anyone in Maryjacquline’s town, he ended up “needing to know someone” when a predicted snowstorm turned out to be much worse than expected and he was unable to drive home after their first date! Fortunately, the parents of one of the students he worked with in his role as a FOCUS missionary lived in her town, and he was able to stay with them for the night.
Jacob made the drive to the town where Maryjacqueline lived and worked for each of the first three in-person dates before he asked her to be his girlfriend. After she happily agreed, the couple took turns making the 2.5 hour drive to visit each other.
Dating and discernment...
Over the following months, Jacob and Maryjacqueline found that conversation flowed freely and their relationship naturally deepened. Maryjacqueline was consistently surprised and grateful to gradually discover, “I hadn’t met a guy like him before. I was just so impressed by him.” At the same time, she shared that early on she experienced some anxiety due to memories from a past unhealthy relationship and due to the initial uncertainty that’s part and parcel of every budding relationship.
In conversation with others, she realized that her experience was far from unique. She observed, “I’ve talked to a lot of friends who are dating and I’ve found that, even if it’s a great relationship and things are going well, most of my female friends are just anxious because until you really know something is going to be there and be consistent and have all the information, our hearts just aren’t made for superficial things. They’re made for relationship and fidelity. There will be a certain sense of uneasiness. It’s not bad, it’s just good to be aware that that’s normal.” Counseling, the passage of time, and coming to find real security and stability in their mutual relationship all led Maryjacqueline ultimately to peace of heart.
Additionally, four months into the relationship, Jacob finished out his third year as a FOCUS missionary, and had to discern whether to move and find a job close to her in pursuit of a Physical Therapy degree, or to continue on with FOCUS but in a new role in Colorado. After prayer and many conversations, the couple discerned that he would move to be near her, which “turned out to be a great decision.”
He didn’t know that she knew he’d talked to her dad!
Jacob proposed in October of 2021 at the Lourdes Grotto on the University of Notre Dame’s campus. Maryjacqueline’s parents lived in South Bend already, and he chose a weekend when his parents were in town for a Notre Dame football game. By the time he asked her to marry him, Maryjacqueline had already known for two months that he had asked her dad for her hand in marriage. Jacob later learned that her dad “has a tradition of telling his daughters if a man has asked for their hand!”
There was great significance behind Jacob’s choice to propose at the Lourdes Grotto. Maryjacqueline has long had a devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes, and has visited the apparition site in France multiple times. When she had previously discerned whether to move from California to South Bend, she had an experience in prayer of seeing an image of the statue of Mary at the Lourdes Grotto on the Notre Dame campus and heard the words “Come and be healed.” Maryjacqueline commented on the beauty of finding healing both in the move to South Bend and through her relationship with Jacob, and was so grateful to have said yes to her vocation there.
A grace-filled wedding day!
Jacob and Maryjacqueline strove to incorporate “sprinkles of Christ throughout the day.” They were married on April 23rd, 2022, on the eve of the feast of Divine Mercy during the Easter octave. Friends made up the entire choir at their wedding Mass, and students from Jacob’s Bible Study were altar servers. The couple chose to incorporate the Litany of the Saints during the Mass, and they chose each saint to be included in the litany. Maryjacquline said, “You could just feel the presence of all the saints.” Jacob noted that “There were two times I teared up that day. One was seeing her walk down the aisle, and the other was while the Litany of the Saints was sung.”
At the reception, the couple intentionally dedicated each table to a particular saint, asking that saint’s intercession for all the guests seated there. They also chose to do a foot-washing in place of a garter toss and in addition to the bouquet toss. And while Jacob had never seen a foot-washing incorporated into a reception and Maryjacqueline, though more familiar, wondered if “it might feel kind of weird,” they both found the experience to be so grace-filled. Maryjacqueline shared that she received many messages afterwards from guests commenting “That was so healing for me.”
Reflections on marriage thus far...
In the short time that’s passed since their wedding day, Jacob and Maryjacqueline have already lived a lot of life together. They plan to move soon to North Dakota where Jacob will start Physical Therapy school, and both appreciate being part of a team making decisions, and doing life rather than making the move as individuals.
Also, they conceived their first child right away, and were saddened to suffer a miscarriage of Ava Marie Joan several weeks later. Maryjacqueline said, “It’s changed everything to have a child in Heaven. The wedding was a blast, the honeymoon was so fun, and then to become parents and to have a child that God ordained to be with Him, and to feel the intercession of that child, was really powerful and such a gift. That was a surprising piece of marriage that we didn’t foresee…It’s so worth the wait to discern a good person to be married to because your marriage will be filled with such goodness even in the hardships. There’s such beauty in something even like losing a child when you’re in it with someone who is a teammate with you.”
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