Nicole: I joined Catholic
Match in early August of 2005 as a joke to tease a good friend.
However, I soon saw Mike's profile and thought, "this guy seems pretty
cool and not sketchy...hmmm." I noticed that he was living in the same
area I had just moved to, and was very involved with the Campus
Ministry at a nearby university. After a few weeks of looking at his
profile, my roommates prompted me to send Mike an emotigram..."I'm
praying for you"
Mike:
My first reaction to Nicole's message was one of confusion--that
someone who didn't know me was praying for me. I kind of wrote her off
for a while, but one Sunday on my way back from Mass, I felt God
tugging at my heart to write her back.
This started a flurry of
emails, essays if you will, about many important topics ranging from
Catholic family life to sports teams. After a month and a half of
emails, we set a date in September to meet at a local ice cream shop.
Despite many apprehensions from Nicole's family and friends, we met up
and sat talking for several hours. We decided to meet the next
night...and the next...and that Saturday for a concert.
Only
after a few weeks and much prayer, we both knew that we were being
called into relationship
Nicole:
Mike took my hand and held me back slightly. I turned to face him and
saw him pull a box out of his pocket and drop to one knee. He asked so
simply, "Will you marry me?" He then opened the box...and it was empty.
We found the ring at my feet. When he opened the box, the ring caught
on the clasp and was propelled out. We laugh and say it was the Holy
Spirit being really insistent.
We prayed about when to enter
into the sacrament of marriage. It worked out for us to marry August
26, 2006. So we courted for six months, were engaged for just under six
months, and married two weeks before the anniversary of our first date.
Our engagement was a whirlwind of preparations, but when the week of
our wedding arrived peace seemed to reign over all involved.
The
night before the wedding, almost forty of our friends from the campus
ministry came up and we
