My Little Flower from Heaven -- #ForAlltheSaints

Like most young girls, when I was a teenager, I longed for a boyfriend. I wanted a boy who would care for me and kiss me and hold my hand walking to classes. I wanted that thing that so many of us want -- romantic love. I dated a couple of guys in high school, had a deep friendship with a guy who I think wanted it to be romance, and definitely crushed hard on several guys who I found attractive both for their looks but also their personality and brains.

As I got into college, I found that I not only wanted a guy I could date, but I was looking at guys with a mind toward eventually getting married. Several of my college friends were in dating relationships and some of those led to engagements and marriages. I went to quite a number of weddings in my early-mid 20s. I was a bridesmaid a few times and sang for a few weddings of friends as well. As much as I was happy for my friends, there was a little piece of me that was heartbroken at every wedding I attended. There was always the thought of "when will it be my turn?" or "when will God bring a man into my life to be my husband?" I prayed and prayed and prayed for a husband.

The years went by and I began to recoil every time I found an envelope made of thick ivory or white paper in our mailbox because I knew without opening that it was another wedding invitation. It got to a point where I looked at my mom one day after getting another one and said, "After this one, I'm not going. I don't care who it is. I'm not going to another wedding until it's my own." I wound up not quite keeping to this vow as it wasn't long before my best girlfriend at the time came to me and said that her boyfriend of nearly ten years had finally proposed and they'd set a date for the following May. She wanted me to sing in her wedding. How could I say no?

About the same time that my best girlfriend had announced her engagement, was around the same time that I had finally decided to convert to Catholicism. I prepared to sing for my friend's wedding and in the interim, one of my new Catholic friends asked me to sing at her sister's wedding. I would have normally said no, but I was so enamoured with all things Catholic and had never been to a Catholic wedding that I said yes without hesitation. As it turned out, the day of that wedding just happened to be the same day that my best girlfriend was getting married. I know it had to be God's plan for me to be a part of both of these ceremonies because one wedding was in the morning at 11am and the other wedding was in the early afternoon -- and the two churches were just down the street from one another.

If everything hadn't aligned so perfectly, I wouldn't have been able to be a part of both weddings and I think I needed to be a part of both of them to prepare my heart for God's gift of a husband. You see, I had become so hardened in my heart and to be honest, hopeless, that I was ever going to get married that I was really kind of bitter that my best girlfriend was getting married before I was. The day of both weddings, I was in a foul mood and was really struggling with a lack of desire to go to either one. If I hadn't already committed to sing at both of them, I would have likely decided to stay home instead of attending. I went to the first wedding expecting to be frustrated throughout it and then have to go to another wedding where I would again feel depressed and frustrated. Instead, what happened is that God used that first wedding to soften my heart a little bit. It was a full Nuptial Mass and it was so beautiful that I couldn't help but feel a genuine joy in my heart for the couple and their families and that joy soothed some of the hurts I felt because of my own singleness. By the time their ceremony was finished, it was about an hour until the start of my best girlfriend's wedding and I went on to the church. When I got there, I found my friend in the bride's room finishing getting dressed. She looked beautiful and radiant. My heart swelled with happiness for her and somehow my own lack of a boyfriend or husband didn't seem to matter so much. Something about being bathed in such joy changed something in me. I still wanted a husband, but I found that my bitterness about my lack of a husband had been ameliorated some and it was easier to be happy for my friends who were getting married.

In the days that followed those two weddings, God made very clear to me something that I had been ignoring because of my bitterness --- I had stopped praying for a husband. I wasn't fully Catholic yet, but was attending Mass on Sundays and almost daily at that point and one day the gospel reading really touched a nerve with me. It was the Parable of the Persistent Widow found in Luke 18:1-8. In it, Jesus is trying to convey the importance of persistence in prayer. As the priest read those words, the Holy Spirit convicted me of the fact that I had not prayed for a husband in well over two years.

The moment that I ceased praying was when I had my heart broken by a young man I was dating. We had become quite serious and had even said, "I love you." I had begun to think, with the way our relationship was progressing, that we were headed toward marriage when one day we met up for coffee and he abruptly broke off our romantic relationship. I was devastated. I felt betrayed and angry and it took quite a long time before I was able to forgive him and move on with my life. What I didn't realise is that in that moment of heartbroken anger, I hardened my heart a little bit toward God and His plans for me. I essentially threw a temper tantrum and refused to do things the way He wanted me to do them which was to wait on His timing, to pray for His guidance, and to trust His plan for me. That breakup caused me to throw all of that out of the window. Upon this realisation, I repented of my lack of trust in Him and asked Him to show me how best to pray.

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About a month or so later, I was doing some reading on the saints and came across St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She was a Discalced Carmelite nun who lived in the late 19th century and became well known for her "little way" of loving God.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, also known as "The Little Flower"

She also became well known for her decisive statement that she would "spend her heaven doing good on earth" and "let fall a shower of roses from heaven." After her death, St. Thérèse made good on her promise to shower roses from heaven upon those still on earth. Many people sought her intercession and found that not only did they receive the graces from God that come from prayer, but they received roses too. Some of these were real, actual roses and sometimes it was simply that they smelled the scent of roses at a moment when there were no roses anywhere to produce the smell. In my reading, I came across a novena that had been written asking for St. Thérèse to pray and send a rose as a sign that the prayer had been heard. When I read this, I immediately found it a little odd (and I have since learned that although St. Thérèse does indeed shower people with roses, the point of the novena was never about the rose but about asking for God's help through this saint's intercession) and didn't give it much thought, but the idea of praying this novena for God to send me a husband just wouldn't go away. Usually when I have an idea like that and can't shake it, it means that it's something that the Holy Spirit is trying to get me to do or show me.

Given that, I finally decided to pray the novena. I'll be honest. I didn't expect a rose. I thought it would be cool if I got one, but I didn't expect it. I was just trying to be obedient to what I felt God wanted me to do -- pray for a husband. I finished the novena at the end of nine days and nothing happened. No voice from on high, no roses from heaven, nothing. I mentioned the novena to one of my new Catholic friends and she encouraged me not to give up hope and to wait on God's timing. She said that the main thing is that I had been obedient in praying for a husband. So I waited. I waited for about four months.

About this time, I began to realise that Gray and I were spending a lot of time together and that the more time we spent together, the more time I wanted to spend with him. I was making myself get up extra early to go to the 6:20am daily Mass at our parish almost every weekday morning and I am in no way a morning person. We were spending time after those daily Masses drinking coffee and eating breakfast at the local Chick-Fil-A and we were talking -- a LOT. He was working and I was working, but we somehow managed to find moments throughout the day to text each other. I began to realise that the feelings I had for him were more than friendship, much more. There is more to our story than this, but suffice to say that on September 30, 2004, we began officially dating each other. I was over the moon. I had been falling in love with him in the months previous to that and now that we were finally together, it was all I could do to stop myself from immediately declaring my love. I had a strong feeling that this relationship might be something that lasted, but I was afraid. Even as giddy as I was over my new boyfriend, I was afraid to trust that he wouldn't break my heart eventually. I felt very strongly that God was trying to tell me that Gray was the one for me, but I ignored that still small voice. I ignored it hard, but as I said before, the Holy Spirit is very persistent.

One night, Gray and I went to a Catholic speaker series at a local restaurant together. As we went in, we were each given a ticket for the door prizes that were to be given away at the end of the night. We'd been to several of the talks in the series and neither of us had ever had our number drawn, so I didn't give it much thought. After the speaker finished his Q&A, the event organizer got up to draw numbers for the door prizes. We both retrieved our tickets and sat quietly talking to each other about the speaker in between the numbers being called. Suddenly Gray perked up, "they just called my number."

"Guess you better go get your prize," I said with a grin. He got up and headed to the prize table to select his prize. He was gone for a few minutes and when he returned, I asked, "So, what did you get?"

He had an odd sort of look on his face as he said, "Well, I didn't really see anything that I liked or wanted, but I did see this and I thought of you." In that moment, I noticed that he was holding one of his hands behind his back. With a small flourish, he pulled his hand from behind his back and held out a little spiral bound journal. "For you," he said and gave it to me. As I took it from his outstretched hand, my eyes fell on the cover of the journal. It was a pale pink cover and right in the center was a single red rose.

My little rose from St. Thérèse.

I nearly fell out of my chair.

I knew in that moment that this was a sign sent from God through St. Thérèse to reassure me that this feeling I had about Gray was true and that he was indeed the one God had planned for me. This sign was meant to help me trust that God has His hand on every part of my life -- including my relationships and including this long-held desire of my heart for a husband. I still have that little journal and it is a special treasure. More importantly though, I still have Gray and as of today, November 5th, we have been married for nine years.

One of my favourite pictures from our wedding day.

Me and my Gray -- husband and wife at last! :)

Happy 9th Anniversary, sweetheart! I love you more with every day that passes and I am so grateful that God brought us together. Here's to many more years together to love and serve God, others, and each other!