Life hadn’t been easy for Louise. She had it tough growing up in a working-class area of Great Britain and being a poor single mother of two by the time she was 22. Life seemed to have put her behind the proverbial eight-ball. She turned to God for answers, and in due time CatholicMatch would become a part of those answers, as she found her husband and a new life for herself and her family.
Louise didn’t have a religious background and had become a believer in Jesus Christ when she was 24, and from there came to believe in Christ’s infallible Church three years later.
“When I converted I found it very difficult to find people who identified with me,” she recalled. Finding a prospective spouse was even harder, and Louise had to fight the temptation to despair.
As three more years went by and she went past age 30, despair seemed to be winning the battle.
“I did not think God had my back, and at the beginning of 2010 I turned my back on faith,” she admitted to CatholicMatch. Louise sought solace in a relationship that offered her financial security, but whose foundations were contrary to faith. After seven months the relationship’s spiritual emptiness had become apparent and Louise was ready to come home.
Just as God welcomed home the prodigal son with loving arms, so too did he roll out a banquet for Louise. This time she was ready. “I decided not to just lay down into despair,” she said. She went to daily Mass, sought out God’s will for her life and as part of that pursuit, she reactivated her old CatholicMatch account.
Some early messages to men in her area didn’t go anywhere, but one man had caught her eye. Joannis was handsome, he believed in all the teachings of the Church, he had a photo of his daughter, and Louise loved what he wrote about himself in his profile — “Simple and honest, just how I like things to be.”
They got together for coffee, but Louise, with “more baggage than a pack horse,” as she bluntly put it, didn’t think it was serious. Jan, as she called him, did some work for her putting flooring into her home — the work the 34-year old does professionally — but she was hesitant about going further.
With him out of work, she wanted to pay him for his time, but he refused to take her money. She had a hard time taking the next step and trusting another man. At that point he picked up his tools, looked at her sadly and said “Is there no chance?”
A voice within Louise told her not to throw this opportunity away. And she allowed him to hold her chastely. He whispered his promise never to take advantage of her and to “please let me take you out again.”
On this second date, something changed.
“I was accepted as myself," Louise recalled. “I’m working class and a woman of faith and love…we kissed like I had never been kissed before…He was loving me and I was loving him back and it felt real.”
This relationship was real. Two months later Jan proposed. They married soon after and took their honeymoon in Lourdes to pay honor to Our Lady and dedicate the marriage to her. Jan and Louise hope to keep their family growing and ask for the prayers of the CatholicMatch community.
