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A Catholic Woman’s Search for a Holy Spouse

On By Elizabeth Dugan2 Comments

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!

Of Courting … Online? – Pt. 1

On By Elizabeth DuganLeave a comment

This subject warrants a few posts about it, since the story is a long one.  I wanted to talk about how I met my husband, Max.  We met online on Catholic Match, in April of 2019. 

Dating apps like Tinder have been very popular within the last several years.  But traditional Catholics like myself aren’t likely to find the spouse they’re looking for on apps that depend more on superficiality and the pleasure of trivial encounters with the opposite sex.  However, sometimes the internet is where young Catholics have to turn, in order to find a spouse.

Personally, I was very skeptical of online dating in general, at first.  I knew of one friend who had found love over the internet, but others I knew had been unsuccessful and I’d heard enough horror stories on the internet to be concerned about who might be on such a website.

But in early 2018, I was graduating with my Bachelor’s degree and our local community had no prospects for me, in terms of a spouse.  When I say nearly all our young men were either married already or entering seminary on the path to the priesthood, I’m not really exaggerating.  

By April of 2018, I was also set to be leaving my home for two years in order to attend graduate school. Truthfully, I didn’t want to take the chance of marrying someone from so far away from my own home. (Little did I know, since my husband’s home is literally halfway across the country).

Despite my doubts – and admittedly somewhat at my mother’s prompting – I joined Catholic Match. I was on it for a few months with no real luck. I had a few short conversations with guys who always turned out to be not quite the right fit for some reason. Many of them were genuinely good men, but who I simply didn’t have a connection with, though sometimes the conversations would end because of differences of opinion.

It wasn’t until early 2019, sometime in March, when I decided I would no longer look through the website and initiate contact with any of the men. I decided I would wait for God to send my spouse to me. I began a novena in hope of this, that my spouse would find me and make contact first and that I wouldn’t have to search any longer.

There were several reasons for this decision, none of which being that I believe a woman can never make the first move to begin a relationship with a man. Firstly, I decided I needed to trust in God’s Providence to send my spouse to me. Secondly, I was becoming a little too superficial when it came to searching the site, paying a bit more attention to physical beauty than I should. Thirdly, I was tired and becoming discouraged. I decided to give my troubles and my search to God (and my favorite and adopted patron saint, Edmund Campion to whom I entrusted my future spouse and courtship many years previously).

It wasn’t even two weeks later that my now-husband sent me a message. We hit it off almost immediately, even though all we knew were those few pictures of each other and all the texts we’d sent. We talked for a little over a month before finally doing a Face-Time call to see each other’s faces. I admit I knew even before I’d heard his voice that if he felt the same, I wanted to marry him. It only took us about three Face-Time calls to officially decide we were beginning our courtship, our road to marriage.

We had no concept at the time of how long that would take, since we were both still in school and lived so far away from each other. I laugh a little as I remember this, since at first we thought we might have to wait until 2021 to get married, but here we are now, just over a month into our marriage.

In other words, sometimes online dating can be a frightening disaster. Other times, it can lead you to find the love of your life. Much like dating in real life. In all cases, I advice discernment of God’s will and your own heart. Don’t depend too heavily on looks (yours or theirs) and don’t make too many assumptions about what sort of person you want to marry. Max’s personality was a surprise to me in many ways, as I’m sure mine was to him. It’s with God’s help and guidance that we found each other and made it to marriage.

If you’re about to embark on a similar search (online or otherwise) I wish you as much happiness as I’ve achieved in my marriage.