When it’s time to study for a test most people will do anything to put it off. Some clean up their living quarters, others watch TV. Jill, attending graduate school in Minnesota, tried something else. She set up a profile on CatholicMatch.
Joining CatholicMatch was something Jill had given prior thought to. “I was feeling down that it was so hard to meet men with good moral values who went to church of their volition,” she said. After spending a little time with her new CatholicMatch profile, looking through her matches and sending emotigrams, she found she felt safe in this online environment. And just two weeks later she found something else—Ted.
Historians will debate which made the first contact. “I contend that it was I who sent an emoticon his way,” Jill recalled. “He claims he did.” What they are in agreement on is that Ted sent the first message with an eye-catching subject line—“You have a sweet smile.”
Jill thought Ted was handsome, but there was something else that was even more attractive to here—depth, both spiritually and intellectually. Ted was reading The Confessions of St. Augustine, showing that he shared Jill’s love for both Catholicism and literature.
They stuck with correspondence for the first month, and Ted told Jill that his “lightening bolt” movement was when he asked her who her favorite authors were. When her list included Thomas Hardy, a favorite of his, he knew this was someone serious about literature.
The first date proved to be worth the wait. “Ted made me laugh so much that my cheeks were sore by the end of the night,” Jill recalled. Shortly after, she took a vacation for three weeks in Ecuador. “Ted had given me a gift of a book he loved before I left,” Jill told CatholicMatch. “As I read…I felt myself growing in respect and affection for this thoughtful intelligent man.”
Jill and Ted had always attended the same parish, but going to different Masses, they never realized it. When she returned from vacation, one of their regular dates was Mass and breakfast. After a few months, Jill was convinced she’d found her husband. “Ted knew much earlier, but kept it under wraps so not to scare me off,” she confided. “I’m a bit cautious.”
It was December that Ted unveiled his creative talents in proposing. He took Jill on a holiday lights tour in a limo, a hunt for clues down a snowy street and finally an evergreen tree that lit up and had the ring hanging from its branches.
The wedding is now just a month out. “Ted and I…spent years alone thinking perhaps we would never find that special person we loved enough to want to spend our lives with,” Jill said. “Now in hindsight, I can see God’s plan for both of us. And all the years of waiting were so worth it!”
