Reflecting on My Life with NFP

I first heard the term “natural family planning” when I was attending a Catholic Engaged Encounter Weekend with my wife-to-be, Carlin, as we were going through the steps of our marriage preparation, way back in the day. Now mind you, I was just shy of turning 25, had attended Catholic schools from 1st grade through high school, and had heard many hundreds of homilies at Sunday Masses up to that point, but the term “natural family planning” never reached my ears, until the brief talk on “Intimacy in Marriage” at our Engaged Encounter Weekend.

After the talk when the couples were given the time to share our thoughts with each other, Carlin asked me what I knew about NFP. I told her “Nothing” as I had never heard of it before. And she, growing up in a non-religious family and being the classic “none,” had never heard of it as well. But in trying to live a faithful Catholic life, my ears perked up and I thought “If this is the Church’s teaching, why have I never heard of NFP before?” And on Carlin’s part, she was trying to live a healthy lifestyle and was intrigued with the mention of NFP being healthy for your body. So that is the point of when NFP entered our lives, and how grateful and blessed we have been since then for that moment in time.

But with all the excitement and work to be done in planning our wedding, the awareness of NFP sat quietly in the back of our minds. However, it was just a couple months after we were married that I happened to see a small article in the local newspaper where we were living announcing that a Billings Ovulation Method NFP class was going to be offered at the community hospital. That re-kindled our interest in wanting to know more about NFP, me from the Catholic teaching perspective and Carlin from wanting to know about its positive health aspects. So, we signed up, took the class, and the rest is (our) history! Not only did we start using NFP when we finished the class, but we were practicing NFP even before Carlin finished the RCIA program and was brought into the Catholic Church! A friend sometime later, when Carlin mentioned using NFP, told her “Wow, you really are Catholic!”

NFP became a valued part of our lifestyle. We used it initially to postpone a pregnancy knowing that I would be transferred in my job to parts unknown within a year and then used it after our move to plan our four pregnancies in the years to come (one ending in a miscarriage). And then, as we aged, we used our understanding and knowledge of NFP to help guide us through Carlin’s time of perimenopause and then into the season of menopause in our “golden years.”

As I look back on how NFP has so beautifully impacted our life, I am so thankful for the presenting couple at our Engaged Encounter Weekend for mentioning Natural Family Planning, however brief it was. Had it not been for making us aware that NFP even existed, who knows how this aspect of our married life would have turned out! And to share how wonderfully our NFP lifestyle evolved, Carlin became so fascinated with knowing how her body was working and how beautifully God had designed us as male and female, she became a Billings Ovulation Method teacher. She has taught NFP over the years to many couples, including helping some who have had difficulty achieving a pregnancy.

Which brings me to an important point as I reflect back on the use of NFP in our life. That one mention of NFP brought us to a lifetime of understanding of just how beautifully man and woman, husband and wife, are made, that is to complement each other, to work together in the glorious dance of creating life in God’s grand design for us. Many times in our time of fertility, when we were desiring to achieve or postpone a pregnancy, I felt in awe of this grand design, in awe of the knowledge we had of just how wonderfully we are made and how NFP had brought us to this understanding. And an important aspect for me has been living in respect of my wife, of how her body works, and to appreciate the gift of her fertility and not fear it. Was it easy? Not always. I learned pretty early on how to interpret her chart and make appropriate plans, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

And now, as we are settled comfortably into our golden years, there is no more charting to be done, but the respect and appreciation of how our bodies work together as husband and wife still hold me in awe and I even joke with Carlin that maybe she will be like St. Elizabeth and who knows, maybe we’ll have to find another baby name!

But as I reflect back on those years of fertility, I thank God for giving me the strength, courage, and understanding to use the beautiful gift of sexuality in our marriage in the ways He designed us, not temporarily or permanently stifling our fertility with chemicals, devices, or sterilization, but working with our fertility.

And to carry on the message of NFP, we do our best to bring forth the “best kept secret in the Catholic Church” when we teach the session of our local OCIA (formerly known as RCIA) class each year on the Sacrament of Marriage. And it doesn’t matter if the OCIA participants are beyond their fertile years, as it is important for women at any age, even grandmothers, to hear this teaching of the Church and pass it on the younger women in their families. And further, as a Deacon, I try to incorporate the term Natural Family Planning into a homily on occasion, but especially during Natural Family Planning Awareness Week in July. You never know when someone might think, “I’ve never heard of that before” and want to learn more.

And one final thought. When I became knowledgeable of and understood how NFP worked and how it was the teaching of the Catholic Church in accord with how God made us, it made me aware that if the Church makes this stand and does not give in to contraception, it truly must be the Church that Jesus established, for it has not conformed to the “changing times” or to the “desires of man,” but has stood firm from the beginning of how we were designed in the image of God (Genesis 1: 27).

And that understanding gives real meaning to Romans 12: 1-2:
“I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”