May 29, 2019 // Local

Sharing the journey of holiness to heaven

Jennifer Miller

Freelance Writer

The popular saying, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey!” didn’t consider the Taylors. The Catholic couple recently celebrated 25 years of marriage and know well that it is both the destination and the journey that matters.

Helping each other get to heaven, the destination, and holiness along the way, Kent and Amber Taylor find great joy in their marriage.

“We are best friends. We love traveling together and exploring various cities … I can’t imagine a journey with anyone else,” Amber shared.

High school sweethearts who began dating at a football game at Lakeland High School in 1987, they grew both in love with one another and faith in God. Raised Methodist, Amber watched as her parents converted to Catholicism. Attending Ball State University, Kent and Amber went through RCIA together, becoming Catholic in 1991. This process strengthened them both individually as Christians and in their permanent, mutual love for one another.

“We have grown in our faith together. We are each private about our prayer life, but I love praying the rosary and Kent is active in praying on his own.”

Knowing they wanted to continue the journey together forever, Kent and Amber received the sacrament of holy matrimony on June 26, 1993, at St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Angola, at a Mass celebrated by Father Bob St. Martin.

During the past 25 years, they were given great joys as well as challenges. God’s grace was present throughout. As current parishioners of St. Mary of the Annunciation Parish in Bristol, the Taylors raised two daughters, now 21 and 18. Moving to South Bend, then LaGrange, and finally Bristol for work, the Taylors both physically and spiritually journeyed with one another, as together they learned to trust in God’s plan.

They have had to navigate struggles. They “have survived the death of my dad and brother, as well as multiple miscarriages and mental health challenges with our daughter,” said Amber. “The challenges have brought us closer in our faith.”

“By the sacrament of matrimony, husband and wife are strengthened and … consecrated for the faithful accomplishment of their proper duties, for the carrying out of their proper vocation even to perfection, and the Christian witness which is proper to them before the whole world,” St. Pope Paul VI wrote in “Humanae Vitae.”

Amber found the ability to “lean on each other while also giving each other space” very helpful during times of struggle. “We grew closer through sudden troubles,” she said with a knowing voice that comes from lived experience in a life of faith.

Ever her true companion, Kent “is my biggest cheerleader but also understands that each person’s journey in the faith is different and unique.”

As the Catechism states, through the sacrament of holy matrimony, God’s love is particularly present in the union of husband and wife, as Christ Himself loves the Church. God, who created man out of love, also calls him to love — the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. Their fruitful, faithful, permanent and mutual love serves both the couple on their way of holiness, their family, the larger community and Church universal.

“Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses, so to follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ, and to love one another with supernatural, tender and fruitful love. In the joys of their love and family, he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb,” it reads.

As they look forward to another 25 years, the Taylors will continue their journey together, both physically and spiritually, as one in Christ.

“I’m looking forward to travel and time as a couple as we will be empty nesters,” said Amber.