Personal Witness Was the Key

There was a point in my life where I was an agnostic, returning to the Catholic Church through RCIA, and struggling to understand the Church’s teachings about contraceptives. God placed a friend in my life who was a convert to Catholicism and we’d talk about some of the “difficult” teachings of the Church. He was confident and yet compassionate in sharing that the Catholic Church being against contraceptives was not incompatible with responsible (and prayerful) discernment of family planning. It was during these conversations I first heard the concept of “natural family planning.”

After my “re-conversion” to Catholicism, I began volunteering with my parish youth ministry. It was here that a fellow Core Team member shared her and her husband’s experience practicing NFP. Hearing from someone who personally practiced was encouraging and made NFP seem do-able in real life, not just in an ideal world. Through my involvement in the youth ministry, I came into contact with a Certified Fertility Care Professional who gave me a basic introduction to the Creighton Model of NFP. I was excited to learn during this session that there was science in addition to good theology behind NFP. I was sold. Through these three people and their own personal sharing of their beliefs and experience, my heart was softened, my mind opened, and my life changed. From that point on, I knew that I would practice NFP with whomever my future husband was and that every woman needed to know that NFP exists.

My husband’s journey towards his Catholic faith and his belief in practicing NFP is somewhat similar to my own. After wandering away from his Catholic faith in high school, he eventually found community during college that built up his relationship with God and encouraged his Catholic identity. Through friends and conversations at the Newman Center at Cal Poly, he first encountered the Theology of the Body and the idea of natural family planning. As time passed, he heard friends who were engaged speak of their experience as they learned NFP. God worked through the people in his life to help convince him of the value and goodness of NFP for his future marriage. Years later, we met and as they say, the rest is history.

God has always made some of the most profound movements in my life through various people at various times and I am convinced that God can and will work through each of us when we are open and available to God. Personal witness was so instrumental in showing us the spiritual, relational, and health benefits of practicing the Creighton Model System, that we have jumped at just about every chance we’ve had to share our experience practicing NFP for the past six-and-a-half years. Being open about the good (and the challenges) with authenticity and compassion can change lives; it did for my husband and me.