4th wedding anniversary, St Gianna´s day and our love story

Today is my 4th wedding anniversary and I have never written how I met my DH and and how it came to be that we married on St Gianna´s feast day.

She has become the patron saint of our marriage and has been so very close to us during our IF that I can only be amazed at God´s wisdom.

I have been blessed to be married to an amazing man. A man of profound prayer (he is a 3rd order Carmelite), of deep faith and my Mary to my Martha.

We met in Church and all our anniversaries are linked with the Virgin. My church had at the time many young religiuos brothers, sisters and priests, but is located in an area that is very Jewish and also filled with mostly older Spanish refugees.

They had planned to do a youth festival which they normally do in France, but they only had 4 "young" persons to help. I was one of them, over 30, but they looked at us for help.

The festival was going to be for Pentecost and filled with all day activities for people in their late teens and 20´s.

One of these young persons was also working with another parish and this parish had a very large and active youth group. So she offered their help.

So one day we set out to present our plan in this other church.

We sat in a very large table, me between 2 priests from my parish and I see a very handsome man at the end of the table. He kept looking at me as if he knew me, but I did not recognize him.

The meeting ended after 2 hours and they agreed to help us.

At the end of the meeting outside in the Church foyer this handsome man turns to me and asks me in German totally out of the blue: Are you single? Bist du ledig?

In German???

I still cannot belive my DH did this.

Well he had heard my last name which I pronounce in German and since I look the part had decided to ask me in German the question he had been dying the whole meeting to ask me. He had been studying German for a few years and knew this phrase.

I began to blush and laugh and said in Spanish that I was. So right in front of a Church between priests he asks me this.

Later we did the festival together, he doing the TV part (he had a TV program to promote the Divine Mercy a few years back and had been asked to promote the festival on Catholic TV) and me running as always around organizing logistics. We kept bumping into each other, but never spoke alone.

The festival included a night of Adoration in which people would take turns praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I had never done it before , but i felt called to pray all night. And he also did.

I kept thinking: this is an amazing man of prayer and handsome also!! wow!

We joke that we spent our first night together praying.

We were both older, had had several relationships, but somehow we knew that if we got together it would be serious so we took a very long time to start dating. I felt always so very shy in front of him,

I kept seeing him in Thursday Adoration, but he was always surrounded by other girls and I did not know how he felt for me. He had a couple of "fans" and I did not know which type of relationship he had to them.

One day we had the invitation to the Ordination of my priest friend and later there was a dinner in Church.

A very good friend decided to step in and she elaborated a plot so we would finally talk alone without even consulting with me. She asked him to join her in taking me to the airport.

It was pouring and there were no taxis. I was to fly to Chile that night and had to be in the aiport in a few hours. She lied to him and said that she was afraid to drive with so much rain and then out of the blue I found myself in her car, with 2 other girls and him.

During the whole way to the airport they kept asking him the most embarassing questions ever (at least for me): What he thought about love, what his ideal girlfriend would be like etc? He was 36 at the time and me 33 and yet we were blushing like 2 teenagers!

I felt once again like i was 16, making plots to meet boys!!

We arrive at the airport and when we were all sitting down to drink some coffee, the 3 girls got up suddenly and decided to go to the bathroom at once. So we were there in the middle of the airport finally alone.

And he asked me out and we started dating a few weeks later when i returned from Chile.

Then 3 months later on the 31st of December he asked me to be his girlfriend (this is still done here) and I said yes and on January 1st he asked me again so we would have this date with the Virgin as our official strating date.

Three years later he asked me to marry him on the Feast of the Assumption in the same Church we had done the Festival and in front again of the Blessed Sacrament.

During Adoration we sneaked to the back of the Church and the same brothers that had played such an important part in our meeting gave us their blessing just a few minutes later as well we asked the sisters that were there to pray that night for us.

When it came the time to decide the day to get married I wanted it to be in the day of St. Patrick, a saint from a country that I have always loved. We wanted to get married in the forest and it just seemed appropiate to me. But it was impossible. It was during Lent and no weddings were allowed where we wanted to get married. So my brother took this date and got married a few weeks before me.

So we had to choose another date and the only one available was April 28th.

I was so sad. I did not know any of the saints that were mentioned in my books.

I told one of the sisters of St john this one day and she said: You are very liucky!

Its the day of St Alphonsus Maria Liguiouri . She said: He is one of the most important Marian Saints and one of the patron saints of our congregation.

I was then happy!

A few years later when we started to face IF I began to read more and more about a great saint. St Gianna Molla.

Somehow she kept appearing to me through the blogs and then through St Gianna´s center in NY.

Then I began to feel a calling to study to become a practitioner and she kept appearing even more.

And one day I notice that her feast day is April 28th and I felt a tremendous amounth of peace. Wow!

Unknowingly we got married on her feast day. None of the saint calendars here mentioned her, but I felt so very happy.

So today we celebrate God´s and St. Gianna´s hand in our marriage.