Fair warning for any non-Catholic reading my blog. This is a very Catholic post, as I’m a very Catholic woman. And keep in mind, this is my personal experience. I can’t speak to every woman’s experience. This is simply the way I know worked exceedingly well for me to find my wonderful husband.

This title is the goal of many Catholic women. For those of us who aren’t called the religious life with a vocation as a nun, many of us anxiously await to find our future husband. I’ve found mine, which means I am removed from this search, but I still vividly remember it, since I am only recently married and only met my husband just over a year ago.

I had been thinking about finding a husband since I was young. Most little girls want to be wives and mothers and I was no different in that aspect. I was a tomboy as a child, but I still had a strong desire to get married and have a dozen children. Since childhood, my Catholic upbringing has emphasized the necessity to discern God’s will for your life. So I decided to pray about it as much as I could.

With much prayer, I discerned that God did indeed want me to search for a spouse. I spared a few prayers across the years for my future spouse, but other than occasionally praying to reaffirm this conclusion, I didn’t think too much else about it until I was about 15 years old.

At fifteen, I had really begun to feel the desire for my future life as a wife and mother. I began to pray every day for my future spouse. I prayed for his safety, that God would give him whatever he needed, and that God would keep him close to Himself.

This continued for a few years. In high school, I began a devotion to Saint Edmund Campion, one of many English martyrs during the reign of Elizabeth I. I felt an immediate connection to this saint after reading a biography of him. Something about him clicked with what I needed and I latched myself onto St. Edmund Campion’s intercession. He’s been my great helper in the years since then in every sort of trial I’ve faced.

Nearly six years ago, just after Christmas that year, I was praying in the pews at church and felt a very strong call to do something I hadn’t expected. I knew I needed to entrust my future spouse and our future courtship to my favorite saint. Usually, people choose saints like Raphael, Philomena, Anne the mother of Mary. I’d never heard of anyone going to St. Edmund Campion for intercession for a future spouse.

But I still did it. I made a promise to St. Edmund Campion that night. I asked him to specifically protect my future spouse, bring him to me when the time was right, and intercede for our courtship to be a beautiful, holy, and chaste one. Not out of sense of need, but in my love for the saint, I promised to name my firstborn son after him as a public show of my devotion.

It would still be years before I would meet my future spouse, but it turned out that my husband was on a journey of conversion that started around the time I entrusted him to my favorite saint. I can’t make the certain declaration that Saint Edmund Campion’s intercession did this for my husband. But I am a woman of faith and I believe this timeline is too perfect to be a coincidence.

Here’s my advice to all you Catholic women still in search of a spouse (and even any Catholic men too). Ask your patron saint to watch over your future spouse. The timeline of when you’ll meet them isn’t guaranteed (it was five years for me), but I think you’ll find it more than worth it. I promised a name to my favorite saint in return for his care of my future spouse, but I don’t think that’s required. I did it as a show of love and thankfulness for a gift I hadn’t received yet.

If it is God’s will that you find a spouse and get married, He’ll send him to you at the most opportune time by His count. But your prayer in the meantime can help ready both you and your future spouse. Your patron saint wants to help you, especially with something as important as this. Ask them! They’ll be happy to help, I assure you. You’ll grow closer to your favorite saint and you’ll help yourself and your future spouse.

Take it from a woman newly married to the man of her dreams. God and St. Edmund Campion brought me my future spouse and he was even better than I could have asked for. The waiting is worth it and the praying works!