NFP: Part of My Family/Faith Journey

With the exception of Christmas Mass, religion was not a part of my upbringing. As a young adult, I gravitated towards eastern philosophies of Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. I then made my way towards agnostic beliefs, leaning more towards atheism. Oddly enough, throughout all of this, I was always fascinated by the story of Jesus. Little did I know that all that time he was calling to me.

I met my wife Jessica during a time where I was at my furthest point away from religion, on the verge of atheism. My divorce from my first wife had finalized four years before. The last thing on my mind was marriage and more children. I had a daughter from my first marriage and I was in a one and done mindset. She had a son from her first marriage. The four of us were so good together. At the time I was good with our blended family. But our love then, as today, was so strong that it was impossible to not want children together. So we embarked on the next chapter of our journey and started to try to have a baby. We struggled a bit to conceive. We tried timing by the calendar and taking basal body temperatures, along with fertility acupuncture and nutritional supplementation. In some way, shape or form we think these methods helped but we can’t say for sure. It took a while to conceive each time but we have been blessed with three beautiful children. When our oldest was two, my wife and I discussed raising our kids in the Catholic faith. While I was still in a place where I was not religious, I knew that this was important to her. I knew also, that no matter what, this was a way to instill good values and morals into our children. I agreed and it was then that I began my walk down the path towards Jesus.

Fast forward to the beginning of this year, three years into my journey, and a few months before my confirmation as a Catholic. My wife comes home from a Natural Family Planning talk and tells me all about it. It made perfect sense to me. A system designed to track a woman’s reproductive cycle to either achieve pregnancy or to avoid it. A way for a husband to get completely in tune with his wife’s cycle of fertility. A method to, on a daily basis, connect with each other about what is going on with her reproductive cycle.
Together, we began the process of learning it, and I can honestly say that Natural Family Planning has brought us even closer. I am connected with her in a way I never was prior to using Natural Family Planning. I look forward to the nightly charting. I get to check in and see where we are. I like to write her findings on the chart because it is another way for me to feel present and connected to her fertility. It takes a bit of time to get in tune with differentiating all the details of the daily observations but once you get the hang of it, really it is pretty straightforward. I think the nightly dialogue also helped us to fine tune the findings. It wasn’t long before we had a good picture of my wife’s cycle.

Recently, we decided that we wanted to have another child. We hoped that by using Natural Family Planning it would be easier to conceive a child. Well I am happy to say that the system really works! On a recent trip to Santa Barbara (the first trip away without our children in three years) we “tested” the method on a “10c x 2” day. I am happy to report that our fourth child together is now on his/her way.