Hey Y’all!

What is a Southern Catholic? Well I’m here to tell you it is someone who loves God, faith and food! I’ve never written a blog before. Actually I have. This is my second time writing this particular blog since I don’t know how to save my work properly! AHHH! Anyway! I love reading blogs and thought I could provide insight on Catholic faith, issues Catholics may face and hopefully share some yummy recipes if my supper turns out fabulous!

So who is the person writing this blog! Well let me introduce myself. My name is Ali Byrd and I am married to my husband Ben. We live in Louisiana. Particularly we live in Carlyss, LA which is like a suburb of Sulphur. Yes it is on Google maps. Between us we have three children: Jaeb (16), Kinsey (14), and Remi (3). That’s right folks! A 3 year old! Why the large age gap? That is because my two oldest children Ben had from a previous marriage. We get along great with their mother! She is an asset to our co-parenting relationship! *Insert gasps, confusion and eye roll* Yes I know that is hard to believe, but we get along GREAT! Now we weren’t always besties, but that’s another story for another day.

Topic of the day: ANNULMENTS

WAIT! You’re Catholic and you’re going to talk about one of the most controversial topics in the Catholic faith? Yes I am! Here’s a little backstory…

Ben and his first wife were married for 10 wonderful years. Well I would assume they weren’t all wonderful which leads us to our topic of the day. Anyway, they were baptized and raised Baptist and got married in a Baptist Church. Then had two beautiful children and divorced in 2009. I know, I know I left a lot out there…not my story to tell!

Fast forward. Ben and I met in 2011 and he was already interested in Catholicism and had started asking our neighbor lots of questions about the faith. He eventually started the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) process to convert to Catholicism. As Ben and I’s relationship continued to grow so did our faith. In 2013 Ben asked me to marry him. YAY!! Super fun wedding planning time! That was until we realized he had to get an annulment from his first marriage. A WHAT?! Google search quickly opened up an entire new world. Ben met with our former priest. That meeting was such a bummer! It was not the news he had thought he would received. Miles and miles of paperwork, witnesses? You need witnesses!! We were discouraged, our faith was shook, now what were we going to do? The process was so lengthy, time consuming and no guarantee date of approval. Maybe a year or maybe many years before we would know. BUMMER! Here we were joyous about getting married and here the Catholic church was crushing our dream. What’s the big deal? Two Baptists married in a Baptist Church. There is nothing CATHOLIC about that! Why was an annulment even necessary!?

Ben and I married civilly on September 20, 2014.

What happens after your wedding day? LIFE. Work, kids, schedules, vacationing out of the country, having a baby, selling our home and buying a home two weeks before Christmas. Where was our faith? Shouldn’t that be part of your life?

I started teaching Middle School CCD a couple years ago to be able to spend more time with Kinsey. That was life changing. So many things about the Catholic faith I had forgotten. I learned more about sacraments and the views of Catholicism. I realized Ben’s previous marriage was in fact looked at by the Catholic church as entering into a sacrament because two baptized individuals entered into a marriage together in their church. It was starting to make sense. Church starting becoming our routine again and kids started asking why I didn’t get up to go to communion. Simple answer was I wasn’t living in God’s grace. That simple answer turned into many complicated questions and answers I wasn’t willing to provide to my class. What were we doing?! We were living our life not the way God intended as Catholics! Did it really take Middle School CCD to show me this? Yes, it did. God’s timing is perfect and oh so good.

Ben and I knew we weren’t going to make any more mistakes and wanted to not be embarrassed or ashamed any more at church by not being able to fully participate in mass. Remi is excited to go to mass and always asks when she can go to see God. (She thinks our current priest is God, but does know his name too) We needed to make this right, we needed to show our kids, who are all practicing Catholics, that we were going to do right by God and raise them the way God intended. By this time Pope Francis had already announced the annulment process was to be made easier. No fees, shorter processing time and encouraged Bishops to help those seeking annulments. YAY! Good news! The Vatican must have been hearing our prayers all these years!

Ben schedules a meeting with our current priest and they got the process started. The process was simply filling out some general information then taking home a testimony questionnaire/essay template. The questions. There was probably 100 of them if not more. Ben started on the testimony. WE started on the testimony. The testimony is a series of questions that asks about your childhood, your former spouses childhood, growing up, dating, marriage etc. The emotional roller coaster had begun. Some things I knew happened, some things I didn’t. It is a very raw process to dig deep into your soul and pull out those hurts and tribulations that happened so long ago. We grew closer in our marriage. We saw what happened, here it was in black and white of what went wrong. Ben and I became stronger because of that testimony. Boy, God works in mysterious ways.

We type the testimony and mail it to the diocese in August 2018! WHEW!! It is over! We have conquered the world! A few weeks pass and we receive a letter from diocese. Could it be that easy!? Decision already? No, but still good news! The diocese had written to inform us that Ben’s testimony was accepted and we would be receiving mail correspondence soon regarding the next step of process. ACCEPTED! Like he just got accepted into the most prestige university in America! We were on cloud nine. We were hopeful, prayerful and loving our Catholic faith.

A couple weeks later we receive paperwork in the mail that it is now time to name the witnesses. WHAT? The criteria to be a witness must be: someone that knew both parties BEFORE they got together, WHILE they were dating, WHEN they got engaged, DURING their marriage and AFTER the divorce. *crickets chirping* Ben struggled with this. The diocese prefers the witnesses to not be family members either. Also, the witnesses had to write a mini testimony which consisted of probably 50 questions about the couple’s home life, school life, married life etc. After much consideration and phone calls and prayers Ben named his witnesses and mailed to paperwork back to diocese. Shortly after we received word that the witnesses received their packets and only had about two weeks to turn them in. All witness statements were turned in on October 16, 2018. YAY! We are on the home stretch now!

During the waiting period our faith grew. Our kids love Catholicism. Jaeb has been playing guitar in the youth band. We attend mass regularly and patiently wait for our turn to receive the Eucharist knowing we should find out the judgement soon. As it turns out, I received word from a friend who is waiting on an annulment, that the diocese has a few from 2018 they are about to make decisions on. Could this be true? Could we really have this chapter of our life about to close? I prayed and prayed! As I knew this was about to come to a head I went and even purchased a white dress that I knew I wanted to wear to our Convalidation Ceremony that I was sure our priest would do for us on the same day as our civil marriage anniversary. Can you tell i’m a planner?

August 1, 2019 we get home from work and there is the letter from the diocese. Kinsey runs into the house and brings it to us so excited for what would be inside. I stop cooking, the house stops, the world stops as Ben opens this letter. I don’t even think I was breathing. He reads and reads and Kinsey is over his shoulder and I’m standing next to him ready to celebrate. Nothing, no emotion. Was he in shock? Was it a good shock? Kinsey walks away with her head down. No, God no. Don’t do this to us. We have longed for this for so long. DENIED. All those raw emotions, the struggles through our faith, the past, the future are all going through my head. I can’t think, I can’t breathe and I couldn’t believe it.

What do we do now? There is an appeal process. Is that the route we would take? We only have 15 days to do something. I quickly send a couple texts to some of my ACTS sisters and get some insight. After the intial shock of the decision settled in, Ben decided he would call our Deacon for some insight. After speaking to our Deacon, Ben realized why the annulment wasn’t approved. The diocese didn’t want the reasons as to why they divorced, they wanted insight on your mental and emotional behavior leading up to the marriage. Were there any doubts? Were there any concerns? These answers would provide the diocese with the necessary information they needed to make a just decision. LIGHT BULB MOMENT. Ben finally understood.

Due to our Deacon not being assigned to be Ben’s advocate for the annulment process, there wasn’t much he could do in terms of the appeal process. Ben meets with our parish priest and he tells Ben that he needs to speak to diocese the following morning when they open. Ben leaves the meeting with our priest and drives straight to the diocese. A man with a plan! He had a GREAT experience there! The staff was helpful, explained to him the appeal process, and even typed his appeal letter for him. The staff told him if his former wife could write about the missing pieces of the story that they would take her letter and mail it with his appeal letter and should get a quick responses. Our diocese even typed up the bullet points of topics for his former wife to include in her letter. THEY LITERALLY ROCK!! Ben calls his former wife and she graciously agrees to help out as she is also wanting the annulment to be approved. She told Ben that she would write the letter and drop it off to the diocese this week. WE LOVE HER!

Now we wait. We pray and we know that God’s timing is always perfect. The annulment process isn’t a fun one but it surely has done great things for my marriage and my faith. Just when you think God was closing the door on you, there he is with arms open wide leading you to the higher ground. Anyone looking to get an annulment needs to seek out an advocate who is truly knowledgeable of the process for your diocese. That may mean a Deacon, that may mean a different priest than your current parish. Trust me, you won’t regret that and your faith life will blossom through it.

Hugs and Loves, Ali

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  Matthew 5:17