Katherine, 40, went from thinking that she might be a religious sister to a mother to 15 children.
It all began when she met RJ—a widower with two sons—on CatholicMatch.
For a time, Katherine felt called to religious life, but then she left the convent to take care of her ailing grandparents. "I knew in an instant, that's what I was meant to do. I took care of them until they passed away."
Katherine, in her late 30s, felt that God didn't want her return to the convent. She thought she would like to get married, but there weren't any good prospects. Katherine was teaching in Baltimore when one of her fellow educators—who was a widow in her 50s—announced that she was getting married again.
"I gave her my congratulations, but inside I was like, "Are you kidding me, God? She gets two? I don't get any.'"
What Katherine didn't know was she was the one responsible for the teacher's engagement.
"At the end of the school day, I was walking out of the building, and she chased me down to catch up to me. My co-worker said to me, 'So, I have you to thank for my upcoming marriage.'"
Katherine listened dumbfounded when the teacher told her, "You suggested I go online to find a spouse. I joined CatholicMatch, and that's where we met."
As soon as their conversation ended, Katherine dialed her girlfriend in Georgia and said, "We're getting on CatholicMatch!"
She enjoyed the CatholicMatch forums.
Katherine joined CatholicMatch in the spring of 2005. She found a great deal of joy in the CatholicMatch forums. She liked that she could talk to both men and women. "I could meet people without thinking, 'Are you going to be my husband? Are you going to be my husband?'"
By August of 2005, she began communicating with a widow named RJ, whose wife had died suddenly two years earlier due to a car accident. Within a month, Katherine and RJ started dating.
She understood what his sons were going through.
RJ had two sons, ages 10 and 17, and they were still grieving their deceased mother. There could have been a conflict between Katherine and RJ's sons, but that wasn't the case—perhaps because she knew what they were suffering. Katherine was 16 when she lost her mother.
"I think my experience of losing my mother saved me from mistakes that other people might accidentally make."
The relationship ended because he didn't want to marry.
Katherine and RJ had been dating for nearly a year, and everything was going well. She was hoping that RJ would propose, but then he began hinting that he wasn't ready to get married again.
"The last thing I wanted to do was make an ultimatum," she says. "But I wanted to be married. I did not want to date somebody for years and years and never get married. I wanted a family."
Katherine calmly told RJ, "Look, you don't have to remarry. It's so okay. I would even call it a normal approach. If you're not ready, that's where you are at, but I want to marry. I think the best thing to do is to go our separate ways."
To help herself get over their relationship ending, Katherine made herself busy.
She put a down payment on a house and went on a pilgrimage to EWTN in Alabama. While she was at EWTN, perusing Mother Angelica's religious bookstore, her cell phone rang. It was RJ.
After having a month to stew over what he wanted, he blurted out, "I think I might be ready! Can I see you?"
Katherine says, "He didn't technically propose over the phone, but he talked about it."
When Katherine returned from her trip, she had an appointment to sign the closing papers on her new home. RJ asked her if he could come with her to the signing.
"After the closing, we take down the sales sign, and we opened the door with my new key and walk over to the mantle, and there he proposes," she recalls.
We hoped it would be good news.
RJ and Katherine took his boys to a restaurant to break what they hoped the boys would think is good news. She felt that the Holy Spirit gave her the right words.
"I said to them, 'We are not creating a new family where now I am your mother. This is still your family only I'm being added into the family, and I'm hoping you welcome me," she recalls saying. "I also told them that their mother is still a part of this family."
By not trying to replace the boys' mother, Katherine opened the door to their accepting and loving her.
In March of 2007, after a six-month engagement, the couple joined their lives in holy matrimony at Holy Family Catholic Church in Marietta, Georgia. Katherine moved into RJ's home, and they rented her house out. A year into their marriage, they discovered that Katherine was pregnant, but sadly she miscarried their baby.
They decided to open their home.
In 2014, seven years into their marriage, and after the youngest was off to college, the couple decided that they would like to do foster care. After having several placements, in December 2015, two brothers ages seven months and two-and-a-half years old came to live with them.
"When they handed me that baby, he grinned at me. In his little face, I could see him thinking, 'Oh! we are going to have fun.'"
Shortly after they both arrived, RJ and Katherine began the adoption process.
"Our policy was, if a child comes to us and we are all they have, we will adopt," shares the couple.
Since 2014, they have fostered 11 children, and in June of 2016, they were able to sign the adoption papers for the two brothers. Katherine says that they are open to another placement and that they are still doing respite care for foster families.
Katherine shares, "During discerning religious life, I lived a beautiful, simple existence. Sometimes I laugh at how my life is polar opposite now."
But Katherine and RJ wouldn't have it any other way.
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