In the Beginning There Was...

To introduce myself:
I am a twenty-three year old woman living in the bipolar state of Colorado (don't like the weather? Wait five minutes).  I am engaged to a wonderful man, I have two cats, and I am currently - and incredibly slowly - remodeling a house that is soon to be mine.  I just transferred to a new store at my job, and it's wonderful working there.  Oh, and I'm one class (henceforth Convert Instructions) from making the life-altering decision of Catholicism.
To tell you how I got here, I must first tell you a little about me.

My family is not religious; my parents took my brother and I to church in our early teens as an effort of providing a family activity on the weekends.  Both of us went through the confirmation classes offered by the church, and - if I'm remembering correctly - both of us were baptized there.  The denomination of the church is supposedly Protestant, but I view the U.C.C. branch of Christianity as 'non-denom', as it were.  I attended through high-school and then promptly stopped as soon as I was deemed too old for the camp I was attending through the church.  I was not attached to the service in any particular way for reasons I will explain later.
Now comes the years of my life I will spare you the boredom of reading.  To give you an abridged edition; I went through several abusive (never physical) relationships and on-and-off enrollment in College.  Five years later I am here, with the man of my dreams and a path ahead of me that feels right.

In meeting said man I discovered Catholicism.  He is traditional Catholic (or Roman Catholic if you prefer) and I have never seen anyone practice religion the way he does.  Living your life as a devout Catholic requires Charity more than anything else (assuming discipline is a given here).  The idea is to be truly Christ-like.
This is the prevailing reason I chose to educate myself further.  I cannot lie and say that my desire to marry this man someday didn't play a role in my decision to pursue Catholicism.  However, there was so much about it that was congruent with the way I already lived (somewhat; I do not presume to be a saint by any means) and the way I wanted to live that I could not turn away.  I was mesmerized by the light I had found in my seemingly darker world: as a moth to the flame I could not resist the beauty that lay before me.  So I began to move toward it.

At this point I should say that we attend Latin Mass in the Old Rite - we're hardliners apparently, though I cannot see the draw of the Novus Ordo; it feels less genuine to me.

The event that sealed my fate was the midnight Mass for Christmas.
I walked into the small church and sat in a smaller pew towards the back (near the confessional) while my boyfriend waited patiently for his turn in the confessional.  As soon as I sat - with the choir behind me singing wondrous chants and polyphony - I was overwhelmed with emotion.  Tears welled in my eyes and I had an overpowering sensation that I had come home after a long time away in a distant land.  It was my first real glimpse of joy, unrefined and intense joy.  Along with the joy came relief and a sense of belonging.  It was a lot to take in, and I spent the rest of Mass riveted to the priest and altar boys.  The Mass was, of course, in Latin and I could not understand, but it's beauty was not lost in that.  In fact, it may have been magnified by the old tongue.
After that night I committed myself to Convert Instructions.  Previously I had forgone beginning them to think through the reasons I might do this.  I wanted to make sure my reasoning was not on account of this man I already loved dearly, but on account of myself and God.  I was fairly certain it was the latter, but fairly certain is not sufficient when making a decision of such magnitude as what one believes.

Here I should say that a few months prior I had bartered (as it were) with a God I was unsure of.  My plea was as such: let me be with this man, let him be mine and I be his - if you exist - and I will be happy for the rest of my days.
I spent a good deal of my time praying (although I was unaware that this was what I was doing at the time) with such intensity for this one thing - this thing that I wanted more than I have ever desired anything in my life - to come true for me.  I had poured so much of me into my wish that when it was granted, it took me a small amount of time to realize the implications.
I had asked God - if He existed - to grant me this one thing, and He had.  God existed.  God exists.  And God actually heard my plea, and He granted it to me.  This says (to me) that being with this man, through thick and thin, was no accident, for God has made it so.

It is now that I will say that, yes, this could be considered coincidence, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, or just that I wanted this thing so much that I put tremendous effort into getting it (which I did, but I had something guiding me in what to do that I cannot explain except for the word intuition - to avoid guardian angel, or something else rather cheesy).  To me, however, the providence is genuine.