My Journey in Natural Family Planning

While a student at Cedarville College (now Cedarville University), a concept hit me while studying the scriptures. The World will tell you clearly that money is a blessing and children are a burden. However, the Bible seemed to indicate that money was often a burden while children were clearly a blessing. Students would frequently mention their desire for family, but would usually set a limit on how many children they wanted. Yet, I never heard anyone place limits on the amount of money they hoped to earn or possessions they hoped to obtain. It didn't take long for me to become known by my friends and acquaintances as the guy that wanted to have 12 kids . I guess they still couldn't resist imposing some number upon God's blessing. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that loving children was a excellent measure of one’s Christlikeness, while the love of money was the root of all kinds of evil.

Knowing that I was not interested in any young lady that was not open to the Author of life, this reputation was not all that bad for me to have.  I came to know my future wife as a growing disciple of Christ, open to all the possibilities of life in the Spirit.

When we became engaged, we truly desired to know the will of God in every aspect of our future life together. We discussed the issues of finances, education, employment, in-laws, and the more intimate aspects of our marital union. We prayed, read books, wrote letters, and sought the advice of married couples we admired for their faith in Christ. We did not practice the physical aspects or pretend marital union before marriage. So we also prepared for our conjugal life by laying the foundational stone of faithfulness in chastity.

I was a Biology/Pre-Med major, so I got to study Embryology. It became clear to me on a purely biological level that I never wanted my wife to place any harmful substance like a hormonal contraceptive into her body. It seemed absolutely clear to me that God had an awesome design in this amazing reproductive system that we could only mess up rather than manipulate. Anyway, I wanted to remain open to God blessing us with children.

My future wife was spending time with one of those older women we respected. This woman had made a tragic decision to abort an unwanted pregnancy while young. In the process of her healing and forgiveness she became strongly pro-life. Now, she had even grown to see contraception as part of the devil’s anti-life agenda along with abortion. She had never heard anything like this before and shared it with me. It struck me as the extreme though admirable view of someone hurt by abortion, perhaps like someone hurt by alcoholism becoming adamant about total abstinence. We could see no Biblical reason to reject barrier methods if we chose to use them, though I would have argued that the pill was clearly Biblically unwise.

Connecticut law inadvertently required us to take a renewed look at the different types of contraception. Very near our wedding date, Linda discovered she needed a repeat MMR vaccination in order for us to get a marriage license in CT. Doctors recommended that she not become pregnant for a period of time after the shot, which included the first 3 months of our marriage. Unaware of any other alternative, we decided to use contraception for those months, even though we didn’t really want to.

We read and studied more intently those sections on contraception in the marriage prep books. In an effort to make the wisest choice, we eliminated all hormonal methods and settled for some type of barrier method. For me, the condom held too many negative connotations. We determined that the "sponge" method with the addition of a spermicide would have the least risk of side effects or pregnancy.

After those three months of contracepting, we were then graciously blessed with the conception of a new, unrepeatable life during the fourth month of our marriage. Dining at the Olive Garden, we celebrated our first anniversary with an 8 day old little girl at our side.

We continued to grow in the LORD. We remained active in promoting the gospel of life at church and in the community through the local Crisis Pregnancy Center. We desired more blessings from the LORD and found out just how the gift of fertility is not only precious but unpredictable.

Something wasn’t working right with my wife’s fertility. She had been having periods for over a year, we were desiring more children, and we had not been using any form of birth control. Yet, we had no pregnancy. We were medically considered as having infertility. Now, we began to think about life without any more children. Would we adopt? We thought about how blessed we were to have tried to get pregnant that first year against the advice of many books and "experts". This only led us to pray more in gratitude and in anticipation for His plans, confident that we were open to the life He had for us. We knew that it was God alone who fully knew the womb and we placed our fertility in His hands.

God is good. Very soon, after my wife missed her period, our hopes were confirmed. New life! What joy to know that God was blessing us, but once again it was not as we had planned. At about 10 weeks an ultrasound showed that the heart was not beating. Our baby was dead. The medical field uses euphemisms like miscarriage, but we knew this was another unique, unrepeatable life from his or her moment of conception.

We grieved the loss but celebrated the life. We named our child and planted a tree in our little one’s memory. Again, the trial brought us closer in unity and made us all the more appreciative of Life. Out of His great abundance He gave us a new life shortly after our loss. In less than four years of marriage we now had two beautiful, healthy girls and we hoped to cherish whatever God might have for us.

Soon, our attitude and spirit of openness was challenged. We had a third daughter only 15 months after the second. We then felt a bit too quickly blessed. Linda was terrified of another sudden pregnancy, which meant another painful delivery. She was exhausted with 3 little ones now, especially with contemplating home schooling the oldest. Our unity was tested; she was not ready for more children and I was not eager to use birth control. By the grace of God, Linda read a pamphlet about Natural Family Planning while workign at the Crisis Pregnancy Center . It claimed to be safe, healthy, and effective. We hoped it would give us an acceptable way of regulating births.

Having three young children is perhaps one of the most difficult times in marriage. It was for us. The issue of procreation was effecting our unity. We were tired but still seeking to love each other and plan for our future in a way that would please God. I knew that to love Linda I could not demand she remain open to more children, so I prayed. Linda knew that our sexual intimacy was intricately tied to our unity in body and spirit, so she prayed and sought some means on which we could both rely to postpone another pregnancy without risking health or compromising our convictions.

NFP taught us how to observe the fertile and infertile times of a woman’s cycle by temperature, mucus, and cervical changes. It was amazing. By understanding better God’s incredible design we knew exactly when having marital relations might end in pregnancy or not. The method was practically flawless when followed properly. However, we used the information that we learned and added the use of a barrier, the condom, during fertile times. The teachers did state that they believed using contraception was a sin. They encouraged abstaining during fertile times if a couple had serious reasons to postpone or space a pregnancy. They taught that this would assist the couple’s growth in unity, but we did not accept the moral implications.

Thinking about contraception as a sin did remind us of that Godly woman’s advice during our time at Cedarville, and it did seem logical from a pro-life position. We remained open to life and open to God making us more open where we feared and lacked faith. God continued to work in our hearts and expose us in our pro-life convictions to literature that spoke about the culture of death. We learned the of the pill’s potential to act as an abortifacient and began to oppose some forms of contraception on moral principles.

We grew spiritually and blessings were willingly received. We would even jest that we had the "gift of receiving". Due to the naturally infertile times during pregnancy and breastfeeding, our need for using any barrier method of contraception was rare. With fertility awareness we knew exactly when our next 2 children were conceived, neatly spaced about 2 years apart. But, now, my openness to life was being tested. Was God too abundant in His blessing? The world in which we live designs vans for only 7, so 5 children is all that fit. Can we really afford further expansion? Besides, we were now fully immersed not only in the procreation of children but in their education. We home schooled. Could God really want to give us more when we weren't sure we were doing so well with what we had?

Something was different for me now when it came to marital relations. I did not want to procreate even though I wanted to be united. My wife was reading articles from the Couple to Couple League that said weird things. Godly men, defenders of life, were making statements like one of the best gifts you can give your child is a sibling. Family defenders were challenging us to be generous in life, trust God, and be a sign of life to the culture of death. We were as pro-life and pro-family as anyone could be and yet I was not open to another ...... another ...... what was it...... a blessing or a burden?

One thing I was definitely still open to was sex. I did not want to abstain but for some reason I had no peace about using a contraceptive. I wanted the sexual relation and the unitive intimacy but I was rejecting its procreative design in my heart. So was I really loving Linda? Was I still willing to give ALL of myself to her in the marital act, even that which may cause procreation?

No, I was willing to take the pleasure but not receive the God given consequences. If I was no longer willing to give of my entire self, I was trading love for mere purposefully sterile sexual gratification. It was as if I was uninviting the Holy Spirit, excluding the Author of Life from our sexual union. At that point, it ceased to be worship. The thought of quenching the Holy Spirit in the most intimate aspect of marriage horrified me. The thought of using a condom now sickened me.

I vowed to follow the Biblical principle in 1 Cor 7:5 "Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control." RSV

Now, until God changed my heart toward another blessing, we would abstain during the fertile times and pray. We would pray, offering our time to God as a fast, asking God to make us one in Him, and opening our hearts to Christ, our Life, in every way no matter what the cost. We took that time to embrace spiritual unity and pray for our children and for others. We gained even greater spiritual blessings than we ever imagined and I grew in self-mastery over sexual temptations.

We now fully accepted the principle that each and every marriage act (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain open to the transmission of life , thus honoring the unitive and procreative aspects designed by God for sex and marriage.

Since we had now accepted the principles for teaching Natural Family Planning with the Couple to Couple League we responded to the Holy Spirit’s prompting to become teachers of NFP. We learned and now teach the "sympto-thermal method" of natural family planning. As we said before, it is safe, healthy, and effective, honoring God’s design for sex and marriage.

The next two of our seven children have been received in gratitude, not because of "method failure" resulting in an unplanned pregnancy, but because of method success in changing our hearts to remain open to the possibilities of life.

Planning a family is not the same for every couple. The couples that taught us both had 3 children each and have used the method their entire marriages. Sometimes couples open to life have difficulty achieving pregnancy. God has plans for families and NFP is the best way to achieve, space, or postpone a pregnancy while inviting the Holy Spirit into the marital union, making it an act of worship.

As a final note, it was this great truth (Humanae Vitae) preserved in only the Catholic Church that opened our hearts and minds to consider the claims of the Catholic Church. We entered fully Easter Vigil 2005. That "journey home" will have to be another post for another time.