Answered with a Rose, St. Therese's Intercession

St. Therese’s intercession is the real deal…

Before we met, Matt’s friend Carolyn prayed a novena to St. Therese of Lisieux for Matt’s vocation. Without knowing this, Matt went on a jog one day through a beautiful cemetery. As he was running, it started snowing. Something caught his eye, two blue smudges on a tree a distance away. He approached it and saw that there were two blue roses stuck in tree. He took that as a sign from Mary that she was with him. He felt the Holy Sprit urge him to dust off the snow of a gravestone to his left. It had a picture and quote of St. Therese on it. It wasn't even a Catholic cemetery-what was she doing on the gravestone? Matt lost track of where he was and pulled out his rosary, asking Mary to help him back to his car. Deer approached him, Matt feeling sort of crazy but just went with it, held up his Rosary, saying to the deer, “This is the rosary of our most blessed virgin Mary, queen of heaven and earth.” And I kid you not, the deer bowed their heads and started slowly walking away. Matt followed them and they led him right back to his car! He went back to tell his friend Carolyn what happened, which is when she told him she had just finished a novena for him to St. Therese. It’s been known that Therese answers the end of novenas to her with a rose! She was quoted saying this before she died, “My mission — to make God loved — will begin after my death … I will spend my heaven doing good on earth. I will let fall a shower of roses.” I do believe those two roses were from St. Therese, answering the novena prayed on his behalf. Matt was not called to be a priest, but a husband and a father. It was the week of Totus Tuus when Matt was serving the Shrine of St. Therese in Collinsville, OK that the pastor miraculously affirmed Matt’s call to marry me and relieved Matt of telling the Bishop.

It was a little less than a year after that Matt and I got married in that same Shrine of St. Therese for our wedding.

AND GET THIS: I was just doing some research for the Mother Daughter book I'm writing. I am including St. Zelie Martin and my mouth literally dropped when I read the following:

“Her dreams of raising a family became very real when she noticed a man crossing the Bridge of St. Leonard and heard a voice say in the silence of her heart, “This is he whom I have prepared for you.” This was, quite literally, a match made in Heaven. The man was the watchmaker Louis Martin, who, like Zélie, believed his life would be spent serving God in a cloistered monastery. Their connection was immediate, and they were married shortly after their first meeting.”

I mean?!? Jesus spoke to my heart almost the exact same words about Matt in the adoration chapel that one night (Read Our Story blogpost)! Matt, a man who discerned celibacy. Matt and I were married less than a year after that!

St. Therese’s intercession is real and it’s changing lives. She has helped both Matt and I in our vocations, and I believe is leading us towards a devotion to her parents, Zelie and Louis Martin, the only married couple to be canonized as Saints together.

Our youngest daughter, Joy’s middle name is Therese and the Mother daughter book I'm writing will be released on Therese’s feast day, Oct 1st. She has shown up in our life, time and time again. I pray she never stops.

If you don’t know much about St. Therese or her parents, Zelie and Louis, do some reading and ask for their prayers!