Second Pre-cana ... Rocked it :)

Second Pre-cana ... Rocked it :)

Ben and I spoke at our second Pre-cana (marriage prep in the Catholic church) on Sunday about ... you guessed it ... NFP! Who's excited?! Well, I didn't think the couples who joined us would be. But we had an awesome bunch of couples who were crazy about each other and looking to get in touch with their Catholic roots.

This post needed a picture so how about Bay on her walk :)

Ben and I got to lead one of the small group sessions as well and were really encouraged when we spoke with our four sets of couples. None of them were uber Catholics, but their honesty about their faith journey was truly inspiring. Each spoke about how they had fallen away from the Church over the years, but as marriage was approaching they had decided they wanted God to be a part of their lives. Doesn't that speak volumes?

But it's true. When we get entrenched in a certain phase of our lives we tend to focus on the mundane and never really evaluate all the choices we're making. Like for so many young adults we get caught up in school and jobs and learning the ropes of this thing called adulthood. We focus on the immediate needs like paying bills and having a few friends to call on the weekends. All those things come, but it takes a true effort to include God. However, when a life event occurs like marriage or having a baby or whatever, it makes us wake up and think about how we want this next phase in our lives to be different from the one before. I'm just so happy these couples realized they wanted God to be a part of it.

And we hoped that after our talk they would consider making NFP a part of their marriage as well. We thought the evaluations might tell us how we did. I was dreading this part because I've been warned by others that they can get nasty. But like I said, we had an awesome group and got encouraging evaluations of our talk! They said things like they enjoyed the background info and the health info, that it was a great presentation, that they liked our passion and our approach, and that we didn't make them feel like evil people if they didn't already use NFP. I was pretty happy with those results!

We did get one kind of negative critique. They said they felt like it was more of an advocation for NFP than a talk on marital connection/bond. And I'd have to say they were right. But that was intentional. They might get that information from anywhere, but the chances of them getting the Church's teaching on contraception and NFP again is slim. It's not something you generally talk about over lunch or even hear from the pulpit. But their point is something to consider because NFP truly supports the continued formation and strengthening of the marital connection/bond. We'll have to dive into that more in the future.

I just can't tell you what a positive mood that whole day put me in. It's just such a blessing to get to be a part of this ministry!