Tom was kneeling in the Adoration Chapel trying to muster enough courage to ask Heather to be his wife. Next to him knelt his middle son, seven-year-old Trais, who was thinking, “Dad’s taking too long!” So Trais, elbowing Tom in the side, whispered, "Come on, Dad."
Heather, 34, from Minnesota, says, “After that, Tom invited me to kneel beside him. He took my hand and kept patting it, which he does when there's something he wants to say that he is having a hard time getting out.” It was then that Heather noticed that his hand was shaking.
She looked at Tom, and she saw that he had tears in his eyes, but she was still oblivious that a proposal was imminent. Then he started to say a prayer out loud to God the Father about the gift Heather was in his life. “As he started his prayer, I was asking myself, ‘Is this it? Is this the proposal?’" she recalls fondly.
Life before Tom: "What if Jesus is my future spouse?"
Trying to figure out if marriage is the vocation God intends for you is an anxious time. At least, it was for Heather.
Heather spent many years trying to discern God’s will for her. “At times, I would start to pray for my future husband, but then I would ask myself, ‘What if Jesus is my future husband?’" she says. “This question would stress me out so much, I'd stop praying for my future husband. I just wasn't certain that marriage was my vocation, even though I wanted that very much.”
She thought maybe God was calling her to the religious life, so she formally discerned with a community for one year. After discerning out, she started to hope for a spouse again, but she was anxious.
She worried, “What if I chose the wrong man and someone better came along? Would I ever find someone I would want to commit my whole life to?”
While teaching in Africa (August 2013-July 2014) for a year, her vocational prayers were answered, and she began to know for a certainty that God was calling her to marriage. “I was [now] able to pray for my future husband without wondering if Jesus was my husband,” she explains.
Asking St. Joseph for a husband like him
When my African students asked her why she wasn't staying for a second year, she told them with confidence, "It's time for me to go home and find my husband."
During her seven months as a CatholicMatch member, she had talked over the phone with a handful of men and went on only a few first dates. Getting discouraged, she decided to pray a novena to St. Joseph, asking him to bring her a man like him: strong, protective, faithful, pure, and good with his hands.
“Ten days after I finished the novena, I received a CatholicMatch message from Thomas in Delano, only 30 minutes away from me,” she recalls. "I liked that he seemed very creative and invested in his boys. He was clearly outdoorsy, another plus. I also liked that he was an initiator; he asked me out on a casual date with that first message!"
Life before Heather: Raising three rambunctious boys
In 2013, Tom lost his first wife to cancer. She was the only woman he had ever dated, so he didn't have a lot of dating experience. Finally, in the spring of 2015, he went out of his comfort zone and posted his profile on CatholicMatch. “The site made sense to me. Since I was a single dad raising three boys, I didn't have time to meet random people and hope they would have lots in common with me,” the 37-year-old explains.
“I began chatting with potential date-ables on CatholicMatch and found that I did, in fact, have the courage to put myself out there.”
After two weeks, he came across Heather’s profile—whom he called, “a cutie from Maple Lake.” Tom liked that Heather had many common interests including faith, family, and adventure. Feeling bold, he asked her on a date.
One their first outing, Tom was waiting in the restaurant for Heather to show up and when she walked through the door he recalls thinking, “Wow! She’s a babe!”
Their first date went so well there was another, and another, and another. By their fourth date, Tom knew he had a gem in Heather.
Making it to the second round interview - Tom's sons!
Tom knew it was time to introduce Heather to his sons—ages nine, seven, and four. Wanting to be cautious, Tom introduced Heather as his "friend." “She met two of the boys at home and helped us plant seeds in the garden,” he says.
Meeting Tom’s sons was nerve-wracking for Heather.
“I was nervous to meet the boys. It was like the second-level interview for a job. I had impressed the boss enough to move to the next level of interviews, but now I faced a whole panel of judges with the boss carefully observing to see how I did. I tried to act like my normal, kid-loving self,” she recalls.
Heather brought a card game and homemade caramels and some other candy, and she had the boys pick a hand to see which one they got. “I tried to interact well with the boys to impress the ‘boss.’” Tom jokes, “The boss was satisfied."
After six months of being “Dad’s friend," Tom asked his seven-year-old, Trais, if he knew what dating was. Trais responded intelligently, ‘Dating is what you do when you're deciding to marry someone.’ I then told them that I was dating Heather.”
As time went on, the boys seemed to accept Heather and warmed to her more and more. “Heather would read the Narnia books to the kids before bed, and it would warm my heart to see the boys leaning their heads against her shoulders as they were whisked away into the story,” Tom shares.
Saying yes to more than just being a wife
After eleven months of dating, Tom was in his parish’s Adoration Chapel, in front of the Blessed Sacrament, with his boys and Heather. He was holding Heather’s hands and saying a prayer out loud when he let go of her to reach into his pocket.
“Once he let go of my hands to get the ring, that's when I knew it was happening. I put my hands over my mouth in shock, and after he had asked me to marry him, I exclaimed, "Of course, I will!"
By agreeing to marry Tom, Heather knew that she also promised to love and be a mother to Tom’s sons. Initially, she had mixed feelings about being an "instant mom."
“I've wanted a large family for a long time, so I was happy that we would have three to start with,” she remembers. “Other times, I mourned the fact that Tom and I wouldn't have the traditional newlywed period with just the two of us, and how I would marry into the responsibility of being a parent.”
Test driving motherhood
Providentially, a month and a half before they wed, Heather got a close-up glimpse of what it would be like to be a mother to three boys. Was she ready to be a mother as soon as she got married?
Photo by Tommy O'Laughlin
