"All the churches were closed in observance of New Year's Day. Which was just baffling to us. It was the first day of the year, but we couldn't find a place to begin our year in worship," DeVine recalled.
Their frustration over shuttered churches set off a "chain reaction" in DeVine's husband.
"He started reading about every single different denomination, going through every single Protestant denomination. I am pretty pregnant at this point and basically was just asking him for cliffs notes," she said.
DeVine noted that the pregnancy itself had been another seed planted in the family's life that pointed them towards Catholicism. The couple had used IUDs for contraception, until Allison found out they were abortifacients. They switched to Natural Family Planning, and became pregnant during what seemed like an "impossible time," based on their charts. Even before their conversion, God was calling the couple to trust him more deeply through the unexpected pregnancy, DeVine noted.
As DeVine's husband continued his church search, "one night he woke me up in bed and said 'I have to talk to Allison," DeVine recalled. "I was like, 'Okay...you can have her number,'" DeVine told her husband, "and he was like, 'No, I think we're going to become Catholic.'"
Devine remembered rolling back over and telling him: "I'm going back to bed."
But for Jason DeVine, a fire was lit. He started reading "everything he could get his hands on" about Catholicism. It was during that same week that the family went to Catholic Mass on Sunday for the first time ever.
"We were totally lost, didn't know when to stand or sit," Allison DeVine said. "And at the end of the Mass, my husband looked over and was like, 'Yes, I think this is it."'
At that first Mass, the parish announced that later that day, they would be beginning a series of talks on Catholicism. Allison's husband told her: "We're coming back tonight."
"I am so pregnant at this point, and I am exhausted, I was almost in tears at his suggestion, just because I was so tired," she recalled, "but I agreed to come back."
DeVine said the very first night of the parish mission answered "almost all of my questions" about Catholicism. Still, they decided to return for a second night.
(Story continues below)
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During that second session, DeVine got up from the pew to stretch her legs and walk out some of her pregnancy discomfort.
"(A) little old man in the back of the church stopped me to ask when I was due," she said. "I told him, 'Not for seven weeks,' and he said, 'Oh, no, that's not right, you're having that baby any day now."'
DeVine returned to her pew and shared his prediction, laughing about it with her husband. She joked that "maybe we should take him at his word since we are in a Catholic church, and they do seem to know their pregnant women."
By the end of that second night, DeVine said, "All of my questions were answered. It was as if that little priest who came to preach was actually speaking directly to our family. Every single question. Everything we were wrestling with."
As it turned out, they wouldn't have been able to return for that third night anyway, because Allison went into labor that night and their tiny son was born the next morning - seven weeks early, but "perfectly healthy, defying every odd."
"We had a priest come and bless him that night, at the hospital, and we looked at each other and said, 'Well, I guess we're in the Catholic Church now.'"