“At the time I lost the diamond, I was teaching high school history in Tallahassee. I noticed it was gone after the very last class of the day. I told Jared that I lost it right when I noticed because I was so upset and needed to be comforted. I was scared to tell him, but I knew I needed him,” Brittany, 24, said.
When Jared, 29, proposed in May of 2016, he presented to Brittany a custom made engagement ring with family heirloom diamonds. Jared explained, “Her great-grandmother's diamond and my grandmother's diamond are the same size and smaller than her father's mother's diamond. They are all of similar quality and color so they actually look like they were selected to be together in this three-stone setting. I also had half of our motto engraved in Latin inside the band: ‘semper’ (which means ‘always’), as in ‘I love you always and forever.’”
Looking for diamonds in all the wrong places
Brittany continued, “I was especially upset when I realized it was the diamond from Jared's grandmother that was missing. I was terrified of disappointing him and his family. I had only been wearing it for eight days. At first, Jared was shocked but he calmed down and kept me as calm as I could be.
“I was frantically searching the high school. I had coworkers helping me search my classroom. We scoured every inch of it with flashlights hoping the diamond would reflect the light. The custodians were helping me by sweeping up the hallways and helping me sift through the dirt and the mop water.
"I searched the bathrooms and crawled around on the floor looking down drains and behind toilets. I let others go through my purse and desk to see if they could find it.
I sent out an email to my coworkers so they would be on the lookout, and they all responded with kindness and prayers. I spent about six hours searching that night. Then I woke up and went back to school at five the next morning.
“My students helped me in the morning. They searched the halls and the classroom. One of my students, who was being particularly generous in helping, had set his backpack down on one of the desks. When I found the diamond, it was sitting right on the edge of the desk next to his backpack!
I called Jared to let him know before school started, and I sent out a follow up email to my coworkers. I received so many replies of congratulations and even heard from students that said their class cheered when their teacher told them I found the diamond. I have never better understood the parable of the woman and the lost coin.”
Their profiles showed their love of adventure
Brittany and Jared are pilgrims at heart, who love adventure and searching out the deeper meanings of life. Seeking relentlessly for the diamond in many ways reflected their own search for their vocation and for each other. Before joining CatholicMatch, Jared had taken a motorcycle journey from his home in Louisiana to Alaska, in order to think and pray. Brittany loved this part of his heart.
She said, “I saw tha
t he had gone on a motorcycle trip to Alaska and back, and I saw that he was the type of man who I could go on adventures with. He also said that he wanted five or more kids on his profile. He couldn't stop talking about his niece and nephews, so I knew he had a heart for children. He said he was looking for his Eve. It seemed to be so romantic that he was searching for the one God intended for him.”
One of the things that drew Jared to Brittany’s profile was her conversion story. She had walked the Camino de Santiago and then studied for a month at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.
The experiences were so powerful that she decided to become Catholic. It was a year after becoming Catholic that she and Jared met on CatholicMatch.
You have to go to Burger King on a first date
Jared thought everything on Brittany’s profile was perfect from her love of teaching and traveling to her being a diehard Star Wars fan. “My first message to her after she correctly answered most of my interview questions was, "Looking forward to the new Star Wars?" We eventually saw it the weekend it released.”
The only problem Jared encountered was that Brittany lived in Tallahassee, Florida, seven hours away from his home in Louisiana. However, at the time Jared messaged her, she was visiting family in Alexandria, Louisiana, only 3 hours from his home.
Brittany explained, “After messaging back and forth to each other for about a week and then a couple of really long phone calls (the first I think was around five hours), we decided to meet up to watc
h the women's World Cup at Buffalo Wild Wings in Alexandria. I really don't remember anything about the soccer game though.
I do remember talking so much and being so nervous that I almost forgot to eat. It was difficult to even find a place to stop the conversation to leave. It felt like there was just always something to talk about with him.”
That night meant a lot to Jared, too. He said, “I could look her in the eyes without looking away—she has intimidatingly beautiful green eyes. I was never able to do that with any attractive woman before. Between that and the ease of our conversation, my heart was set on her. My mom even noticed that I was floating on a cloud when I stopped by their house on the way home from meeting her.”
Brittany and Jared considered there time at Buffalo Wild Wings to be more of a get-to-know-you instead of a true first date. Jared said, “We decided to meet a week later in July 2015 in Natchitoches, Louisiana, which I consider our ‘first date.’ We spent the afternoon on the waterfront downtown, and I asked her to be my girlfriend. She said her family had a tradition that everyone goes to Burger King on their first date so we went to Burger King. She then said that one of her friends had a philosophy that someone becomes your true friend when you cross a state line together, so we drove to Texas.”
A very memorable double date
For eight months, Jared and Brittany kept up their long distance relationship with daily phone calls and frequent visits. They synchronized movies and TV shows so they could watch them together, and they prayed together. In March of 2016, Jared surprised Brittany with a proposal.
“Jared took me on a double date with his parents to an art gallery. One of the common themes of the art was the idea of home. His parents had gone outside to wait for us, and they were at the street corner when we came out.
"As Jared and I were walking outside, he said he had a song stuck in his head all day and began singing Elvis Presley's ‘Can't Help Falling in Love With You,’ which was our song. I didn't think anything about it all because he sings it to me a lot. His mom had her phone out taking pictures, but once again nothing seemed weird because she takes a lot of pictures.
I was cluelessly looking around wondering what we're going to do next, when he asked if I remember his favorite part of the song. I said, ‘Of course I do.’ He sang his favorite part, and at 'Take my hand' he got down on his knee, and at 'Take my whole life too' he had the ring out. I was not expecting it all!”
Three months later, Brittany moved to Lafayette, Louisiana to live near Jared as they plan their wedding for June of 2017.
The best is yet to be
Brittany and Jared have loved being closer together, and they have already begun traveling together. They have enjoyed motorcycle trips, and they went to Europe! “In July, after a brief vacation with her family a
nd another with mine, she and I went to Europe (my first time crossing an ocean) to visit Budapest, Vienna, and finally Krakow for World Youth Day. It was a wonderful and immensely beneficial experience to be on pilgrimage together,” Jared said.
As for CatholicMatch, Brittany said, “Try it out! It's a great way to meet other Catholics, especially if you come from an area without many young Catholics. It also gets a lot of the important questions out of the way very quickly, so it makes it easier to find someone with a lot of the same values.”
Jared added, “I can't encourage Catholics enough who are looking for that special someone but aren't seeing them in their daily walk with Christ to at least try it. The Faith portion is a big help to get over those initial hurdles so that you know you're forming a relationship with someone who is not disagreeing with basic Church teaching on aspects vital to marriage.”
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