After forty-three years of marriage, Carol’s husband died peacefully in his sleep, following some years of ill health. Carol mourned her husband and began settling down to quiet widowhood.
However, after some time of this she found that she missed, not only her husband, but the simple comfort of having a man in her life.
And so, she began to consider the possibility of dating again.
At the same time, though, she knew she ought to refrain if what she felt was simply a wish to replace her lost husband. That wouldn’t be fair to the other person, nor healthy for herself.
Thus, while considering her dating options she prayed diligently for God’s guidance, and for a time she felt the need to hold back. During her discernment process, she considered several ‘senior’ dating sites, as well as CatholicMatch.
Then, one night when she was looking over CatholicMatch, she felt a strong sense that God was telling her it was time to begin.
She whipped up a profile, and wrestled her way through putting up a current self-portrait (as she put it, “I am not very tech savvy”).
It only took twenty minutes to find each other.
Many people find it takes quite a bit of time to find their match on the site. Sometimes it takes years. For Carol, it was roughly twenty minutes before she received a note from “a very handsome man” from Colorado.
Carol’s first thought was an incredulous “Colorado?!” You see, Carol is from Wisconsin, and she had specifically filtered her search to limit results to those within driving distance.
Nevertheless, she was intrigued by his profile. He described his experience growing up on a farm in North Dakota, his journey to becoming self-employed, and his love of adventure and the outdoors, all things Carol the “old fashioned gal” could appreciate.
Though not crazy about the prospect of a long-distance relationship, she decided that, at least in friendliness, she’d answer.
As she put it, “The rest, as they say, is history.”
John, she learned, had been in an annulled marriage, and like her had eventually heard the call back to the marriage state.
Only while Carol met her match within a half-hour, John had been searching CatholicMatch for almost five years.
“We like to think he did the heavy research and I did the heavy praying,” Carol commented. “We both feel that God put us in each other’s hearts before we even met, and that God brought us together in the right way and at the right time for His purposes.”
They were married on July 9, 2016, their five children by their side. They then proceeded to satisfy their mutual love of adventure, rural life, and family by spending their first year of marriage roaming the country in a camper like a couple of modern nomads, visiting family and friends and exploring this beautiful country.
The perfect compromise, living between both families.
This arrangement also neatly solved the distance problem, turning it into an opportunity rather than an obstacle.
Carol had specifically said she didn’t want to move away from her kids, but then, John didn’t want to either.
Rather than settling down on either side, they spent their first year of marriage on the road, equally close and equally far from each other’s families, while simultaneously sharing something they both loved. In fact, what Carol had initially considered a reason to ignore John’s message turned out to make their relationship even more wonderful.
By listening to God and following His will, even when it seemed strange to them, Carol and John, respectively 65 and 72, not only found each other, but a whole new experience that has left their lives all the richer and more blessed.
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