Rebekah, 21, had been through a bad breakup and she was feeling a little hopeless. After attending a SEEK2015 conference in Nashville, she was inspired to make a Novena to St. Thérèse. “I asked her for a rose. I prayed, ‘Do I need to pursue the religious life, or should I be pursuing a future spouse?’ After the novena, I got a red rose, which for me meant to pursue married life.”
But first she decided to do a dating fast for five months—she had been dating since the 8th grade. During this time, she made a Novena to St. Raphael the Archangel. At the conclusion, she started trying to figure out good dating sites.
“I pulled out my SEEK bag and I saw one of the pamphlets from the CatholicMatch booth. Initially, I had walked by their booth and I had thought to myself, ‘I’m never going to be an online dater. I’m in college. I should be able to find somebody.’”
In April of 2015, when she went to CatholicMatch to sign up, Rebekah got a surprise. “I scrolled down to the bottom of the page when I was done signing up, and there was a picture of St. Raphael. I was thinking, ‘God works in mysterious ways.’”
Alexander Was On A Fast From Dating Too
Like Rebekah, Alexander, 24, also went on a dating fast. “I took a whole year basically not even talking to women and I discerned the priesthood. After that, I had a girlfriend for quite some time and then we broke up. I decided maybe I wasn’t called to the married life. My priest told me in confession, as a part of my penance, I must find a spiritual director.”
Alexander saw a spiritual director and a vocations director every month. “I was constantly wondering, ‘Where am I supposed to be? I’m so tired of not actually knowing what I’m supposed to do,’” he says.
During his discernment, he decided to join CatholicMatch. “I told my spiritual director about it and he said, 'Well, we still need to keep this discernment process going.' I wouldn’t say discernment necessarily ended, but I definitely feel like I know my calling is marriage."
No Pursuing for Her!
A week into her six-month subscription, Alexander contacted Rebekah. “The funny thing is I had seen his profile, but it said, ‘seeking friendship only,' so I refused to click on it,” she recalls. “’He would have to contact me,’ I thought.”
When she joined in the spring of 2015, Rebekah made a rule that she would not be the pursuer in the relationship. She felt the problem in her other relationships was that she was the one pursuing, and she never felt secure that these men really liked her. “I was willing to sacrifice my expectations because I wanted so badly to be a mom.”
Because of this desire to mother men and to be a mother, she ended up in bad relationships, which included sexual violence and sexual abuse. “I made some very terrible choices in the boys that I dated. My children, needless to say, will not be dating in 8th grade.”
What if Alexander Does Have a Vocation to the Priesthood?
From the beginning of their relationship, they had talked a lot about Alexander potentially
having a vocation to the priesthood. “I knew pretty early on in my discernment process that I was not called to religious life. But for him, it’s taking a little bit longer,” Rebekah says.
Although they thought they were meant to be together, Alexander was still discerning the priesthood with his two spiritual directors. Rebekah knew that there was still a possibility that he could become a priest.
“In the beginning of our relationship, we would talk about him going to seminarian breakfasts and things like that, or little retreats. And I’d be like, let’s not talk about priesthood—let’s just enjoy this now. But it’s settled into regular conversation.”
In order to keep their relationship focused on God's will and not their own, they would pray together twice daily for clarity. “Our calling is to lead each other towards salvation—to ensure holiness for each other. I think I would have been very happy if he found he had a calling to the priesthood, but I also would have been very sad if our calling wasn’t to be together.”
No More Flying!
The first six months of their relationship was long distance because Rebekah lived in Ohio and Alexander was from Texas. They would take turns flying to see each other for a weekend every month. Fortunately, Alexander was able to get a transfer to Ohio for his job and on the last day of August 2015 move to Ohio.
By the time he made the move, he was no longer discerning the priesthood and was fully devoting himself to his calling as a future spouse.
With his move came a time of adapting because they weren't used to being together so often. The apartment that he was looking to move into did not have any availability at the time of his move, so after Rebekah moved into her own apartment, her parents invited him to stay with them until his apartm
ent complex opened up.
"I must say, in going from seeing each other for only a few days each month to spending a few hours a week together was really challenging. We had developed a communication schedule and system that seemed to work really well for us when he was living in Texas.
It was really tough in the first few weeks when he was with my parents. Our relationship was still relatively new and we were learning how to adapt to the new closer distance and then to add in the complication of my very involved family, had us feeling like our relationship had gained an additional three members [Rebekah's parents and younger brother]."
Rebekah had to accept that Alexander was now spending more time with her family than she was. "But, it turned out that allowing him to spend so much time with my family was a positive thing. My brother now has a new best friend and role model, and my parents were able to see firsthand how loving and faith-filled Alexander is."
The Next Step
In December, he was able to move into his own apartment, and because Rebekah's schooling and Alexander's work keeps them busy, they schedule date nights once a week and attend Mass weekly together. "Each night, we still call one another to say our evening prayers, and take advantage of our physical time together to pray in person," she says.
Their schedule must have been working because on one Sunday, after Mass, Alexander proposed to Rebekah in front of the tabernacle. "We will be getting married May 13th, 2017! I would never have met this wonderful man had it not been for CatholicMatch, and for that, I am so thankful!"
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