Where is this great guy you want to find next to you every morning of your life when you wake up? Where can I find that kind, romantic, funny, determined, confident, sweet and thoughtful man?

And finally, where do I find such a superman willing to pursue me, pursue me? I still have adolescent acne, a butt which is larger than Texas and I have not yet learned how to upload pictures on the computer…

I have some answers for the first two questions, such as these: the perfect man does not exist in reality; or… perhaps I know one, but my friend took him while I was looking for a splinter in his eye. And again, maybe there is, and surely I’ll find him and he will fall at my feet, but no one believes it; actually neither do I. The answer to the third question was clear and firm: “No one would ever choose me.”

These are just some thoughts; thoughts of teen Alessandra in her room as she looks at her new pimple in the mirror and says “hell!” In high school I was the friend of the pretty one. So I was the fun one. That is, while I was thinking about the coolest guy ever of my life, no one cared about me. If someone was flirting with me, he was just embarrassing. Actually I wasn’t much concerned about it because I really felt beautiful inside and my inner life was growing more and more in my deep relationship with God. This used to take a lot of space in my day, both in parish activities and in moments of solitude spent reading the psalms, often surrounded by nature under a big tree on top of a hill. The more space I gave to these things the more I felt fulfilled; so much so that I thought that all I wanted from life was to devote myself to God and to others. Yes, becoming a nun, that was the thing that gave me immense joy. So, after the example of St. Francis and with the enthusiasm of the friars and nuns that I spent time with in Assisi, I put on a pair of sandals, despite the cold of winter and the laughs of my friends.

Father Giovanni, a friar who was my spiritual director, understood where I wanted to end up. And without even talking explicitly about it, he started saying stuff like “you must learn how to court a man first and then we can try to court God! So you have to court at least 10 guys and then choose the best. No fussing, look among the guys you already know. Go! Don’t forget that the man thinks with the eye: short skirt (very short indeed) heels, makeup, styled hair, etc. Hurry up!”. In fact I hadn’t had any important love story at that time (I was only 17!) So what he said made sense.

But now where do I find a guy?

And if I find him, he will never want me! I went to the Porziuncola Church and thought about whom of the friends in my life I looked up to and who could be worth having a story with. Immediately I thought of my friend Francesco, whom I had met the year before at the Franciscan March, but with him it would have never worked. First of all, he belonged to the superman category. Also, he worked in Switzerland and was eight years older than me. Anyway, I took him as a benchmark; he represented the top. Then I made a deal with the Lord: “I am willing to court a man and put on skirts, heels, makeup and everything else only if he is a man (not a kid), that is more or less like my friend Francesco, from him up, I will not settle for less even to go drink a coffee.”

To my surprise, though, a couple of months after that morning at the Porziuncola, Francesco began to call me and to pay attention to me. He too, was going on his own path. I began to engage in this relationship, in obedience to Father Giovanni’s suggestions. At first it was just to prove to myself that my life was somewhere else. What scared me most in having a relationship with a guy was that he could take me away from my deep relationship with God. I did not think something so intimate could be shared with anyone else. I fell in love with him head over feet. Not only I was wrong, but that intimacy deeply increased. It was all the more beautiful, more mature, more concrete.

In conclusion: I met the right man at the Franciscan March, I recognized him as a man I respected in the Porziuncola, and I realized that he was the right one because he wasn’t perfect, but he could get in the game. He made me breathe air of freedom when we were talking about the choices I had to do at the university, and, very importantly, he knew how to argue and start again (which has been very useful) every time.