Since we announced we were having a baby back in
January I’ve been asked a number of times if we will still be able to teach
NFP. Ummm, yes.
I guess it is going to come with the territory. If
you use NFP many people will assume it failed each time you announce you are
pregnant. But NFP can’t fail. That’s the whole point of it. Let me explain.
My husband and I use NFP as a means of family planning for
many reasons such as being healthy, knowing our bodies, and because we believe
contraception is contradictory to the vows we spoke at our wedding. But one of
the most important reasons for us is that it is always a ‘yes’ to life.
That little line let's us know a life has been created.
Contraception is a ‘no’ to life in many ways. First,
it’s a no to your spouse’s fertility, which is one of the greatest gifts a
spouse can give. It takes God’s plan for
life out of the equation and put’s your imperfect plan in the forefront. And of
course contraception has the ability to actually end life after it’s begun as
one of its functions in preventing pregnancy.
Ben and I decided that all of those rejections to
life were not what we were called to. In fact we felt and understood that it
was our vocation as a married couple to put a huge emphasis on saying yes to
life in every aspect of our marriage whether that be actually having children,
ministering together so others know about this ‘yes’ to life, or whatever God
called us to.
With NFP it is impossible to say no to life. You, as a
grown up, instead have the knowledge to recognize your ability to create life
and, together with your spouse, decide whether or not you are called to that path
every cycle.
So, no,
NFP did not fail because a life resulted when it was supposed to and was not
prevented by Ben’s or my intentions or medically through an abortificant
nature.
It also wasn’t a fail because through NFP and
charting we had discovered that I could have some issues conceiving. It was with
this knowledge and many long discussions that my gift-from-God of a husband who convinced me that if we continued to actively postpone pregnancy we could miss
our chance. So I gave up control to God, and He decided to do some fancy
driving.
In the months following our decision I had some very
odd cycles that made me seriously doubt my ability to conceive. I even contacted
a nutritionist and began to change my diet in an effort to correct the
problems we were seeing. Three months later I got the best birthday present ever (and a huge surprise) when that second line showed up on the pregnancy test. I
have to attribute this as a success to NFP in that it helped us recognize
potential issues with conceiving and gave us the ability to decide to be open
to life and God’s perfect plan.
If you had asked me two years ago if I’d be expecting
a baby girl in the near future I would have laughed at you because that was not
in “my plan.” But now I understand the saying “in God’s perfect timing” because
I couldn’t imagine my little family's life if it had gone according to my plan and not God’s plan
for life.
