Blessed Child 1.
Female, Blessed 2018, matched a year before being Blessed
1.What did you do to prepare yourself internally before starting the matching process and during the matching process?
From my late teenage years I felt that I wanted to get matched around the time I finished my bachelor studies. The reason for this was that I thought that would be helpful in case I decided to move to my future husband’s country and find a job there. So I made sure my parents were aware of this.
To grow my heart and prepare myself to be ready to commit myself to someone I did a 7-day fast condition. My parents later on expressed when they thought I was ready, and once I agreed and said “Yes, I think I am ready too”, then we started a prayer condition together. We used the prayer condition to ask God to help my parents and I to prepare our hearts to find a person I could share my life with.
Both prior to the matching process and during the process itself I communicated regularly with my parents about my feelings and thoughts related to the matching. I also spent time reading HDH material on the Blessing and relationship books such as “Real Love” by Greg Baer to make sure I myself felt the value of committing myself to the Blessing and a marriage relationship.
2.What were some challenges you faced in communicating with your parents during the matching process and what specific actions did you take to overcome these challenges?
Having grown up with 4 other siblings I did not often have one-on-one time to talk with my parents. I therefore had to become more accustomed to asking them for time to talk and share my thoughts. To make it easier and less pressured to share my thoughts and feelings with my parents, we started off reading a relationship book (Real Love by Greg Baer) and discussed the content together. This made talking about expectations and feelings related to the Blessing feel very natural.
3. How has the matching process impacted your relationship with your parents overall?
Wife: I feel very grateful for the time my parents took to attentively listen to my thoughts and feelings during the matching process. I have therefore become much more able to talk one-to-one with my parents about sensitive topics such as challenges I am going through or worries I have for the future.
4. How did you ultimately decide that this is the person you wanted to be matched to?
This felt like a big, difficult decision for me. 3 months into the matching process I was doing a 40 day condition of praying and bowing and I had some expectations in mind that God would soon give me some kind of sign during this time. At the same time, the matching process was moving smoothly forward and I was getting to know my prospective match better and better. So my parents told me I shouldn’t worry because maybe the smoothness of the process could already be a sign in itself.
What I was seeking to find out through the matching process was not only to understand if we got along well, but also to see if the other person had a desire to grow spiritually throughout their life with me. In my family our main spiritual activity which has shaped me today was to read and discuss HDH together. A couple of months into the matching process I therefore asked my prospective match if he wanted to join me in reading HDH together once a week and share our thoughts about the content….
5. Is there something you wish you had known, or worked on more, before entering the matching process?
I wish I was more aware of how short a time it takes to come to like a person you are in a matching process with. Especially as one spends a lot of time talking about one’s deepest values and life goals. It therefore became important to me to keep a clear list of what I wanted to get to know about the other person as well as to continually reflect with God and my parents to seek advice and find out if this was a person whom I could be really committed to share both the most challenging and the happiest times of my life with. However, I was maybe not so aware of my prospective match’s point of view and how he might have developed a feeling of closeness with me. Most importantly, I think you have to be very careful you do not hurt the other’s feelings if something difficult comes up during the process. Especially when it comes to sensitive topics, for example realising something about a prospective match which comes as a surprise as you did not think they were “that kind of person”.
Blessed Family Department 