Natural Family Planning…A Conversion of Heart
by Andy Alderson
My wife and I were on our way to the mall in Little Rock, Arkansas, when she dropped the bomb on me: “We’re going to practice NFP.” I made her say it again just so I was clear, and then I asked her to explain to me what that meant. She told me briefly that NFP is short for “natural family planning,” and that it is a scientific method that would enable us to define the fertile and infertile times of her cycle. And once we knew that, we could space the births of our children. “Of course,” I thought, “that’s the ‘rhythm thing’ those Catholics do.” Thus began our not-so-steady NFP journey!
Although I thought we would end up with enough kids for a baseball team, I went along with it…to a degree. I went to some of the classes, but not all. That was me in the back with a baseball cap pulled over my eyes and my arms folded across my chest, pointedly ignoring the NFP teachers. In my macho posturing I missed a key message: NFP is really just knowledge —an awareness of a woman’s signs of fertility. So with no knowledge, I basically knew nothing about NFP.
My stubborn ignorance was a difficult cross for my wife to bear. Everything was on her shoulders to space our children and, worse, I constantly harangued her about how hard it was, that it wouldn’t work…yada yada yada. This went on for several years until it dawned on me that NFP did work. We were, in fact, spacing our children.
About then I also noticed that other couples who practiced NFP seemed to have a spark in their marriage that was lacking in ours. What was that spark, and why did NFP have to be so hard for us?
Like the Grinch, I “puzzled and puzzled till my puzzler was sore” till I too thought of something I hadn't before. Unlike the Grinch, however, my heart did not grow three sizes that day! In fact, my heart sank, right along with my ego.
The problem was me.
It had always been me. It had nothing to do with NFP and everything to do with my own attitude…my fear of living a truly sacramental marriage with God at the helm. For the first time in my life I understood that love is a decision.
I made a decision to love my wife as God intended and to trust in His plan. I would no longer complain about NFP. I would learn the method., and I would be an active participant instead of a bystander.
Guess what? As my attitude improved, so did our marriage. We communicated better. Our marriage seemed more enriched and fulfilled. Our lives improved so much so that it made me take a closer look at my wife’s faith, and ultimately NFP was the catalyst for my conversion to Catholicism (but that’s another story).
In the spring of this year, I lost my wife to cancer. I am blessed for the 22 wonderful years we had together as well as the experiences we shared through a sacramental marriage that would not have been possible without NFP. And I have her to thank for that—her patience, her faith and her daily prayers for me.
Andy Alderson is a retired Lieutenant Colonel with the U. S. Air Force. He is the Senior Project Manager of the Couple to Couple League. Andy and his five children are members of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Burlington.
Ten Reasons to Use Natural Family Planning
by Joan O. Noll
Like our Diocese of Covington, many dioceses in the U.S. are making Natural Family Planning (NFP) instruction part of marriage preparation. Some couples are asking “Why?” Here are ten good reasons.
1. The Church Is on Your Side! With a 50% divorce rate in the U.S., the Catholic Church wants marriages to succeed. Dioceses offer a variety of programs to help couples prepare, not just for the wedding day, but for a lifetime together. Some include NFP as part of the package. Experience has shown that couples who live according to God’s plan for marriage have better, happier, lifelong marriages. The “stay-together rate” for couples using NFP is estimated at 95% to 97%.
2. Spiritually Enlightening. NFP teaches couples how to love. Just as Christ laid down his life for his bride, the Church, married couples are to be a total self-gift to each other. Christ gave Himself freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully. Married couples are called to model God’s love to the world.
3. Virtue Building. The “fruits of the Spirit”-love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance—are all virtues needed for a lifelong marriage. If authentic virtue is weak in the beginning of marriage, using NFP properly develops it.
4. Emotionally Uplifting. A wife appreciates the husband who willingly sacrifices some pleasure for her sake, and the husband often feels privileged in being let into knowledge of his wife’s fertility. Romance is enhanced when couples use the fertility/infertility cycle as a monthly courtship and honeymoon. Couples become true lovers-not users.
5. Health Enhancing. NFP encourages healthier lifestyles, and learning the body’s normal function enables couples to seek earlier medical help for abnormalities. Hormonal and mechanical contraception can be harmful to health and fertility and may cause early abortion. NFP can be used to achieve or avoid pregnancy, is immediately reversible and completely safe!
6. Low Cost; Easy to Learn. For a small investment of time and money, couples get a lifetime of information. The Couple to Couple League offers a series of three classes spaced a month apart, totaling about eight hours of instruction. The current cost is $135 per couple, less than the cost of a tux rental. Birth control pills cost $15 to $50 per month!
7. Highly Effective. The Couple to Couple League (CCL) teaches the Sympto-Thermal Method (STM) with three basic signs of fertility. The recent Los Angeles Study yielded a Method Effectiveness Rate of 100% (99% in a large population). User Effectiveness Rates can be less depending on the intention and motivation of the couple.
8. Quick and Easy to Use. A few simple observations each day are all that is needed to use NFP. The couple determines the fertile and infertile time and decides when marital relations are appropriate.
9. Better Communication. Using NFP requires couples to talk about their goals and God’s plan for their family. The Church calls couples to responsible parenthood. Knowledge of NFP gives couples the tools to prayerfully, prudently, and generously cooperate as God’s co-creators without recourse to unnatural, immoral methods of birth control that interfere with the way God designed fertility. When couples can discuss family size, they find it easier to discuss other issues like finances, in-laws, and child rearing. Better communication leads to better marriage.
10. Openness to Life. “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder” refers not only to the union of man and woman in marriage but to every marriage act. Simply stated, God made the marriage act for two inseparable purposes: Babies and Bonding. The NFP couple chooses the timing of marital relations but does nothing to thwart the act itself.
Visit The Couple to Couple League website for more information and class schedules: www.ccli.org.
Joan Noll is a Certified NFP Teacher for the Northern Kentucky Chapter of the Couple to Couple League.
Quotations
“This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” (Deut. 30:19)
Conjugal love involves a totality… It aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul.
In its most profound reality, love is essentially a gift; and conjugal love, while leading the spouses to the reciprocal “knowledge” which makes them “one flesh,” does not end with the couple, because it makes them capable of the greatest possible gift, the gift by which they become cooperators with God for giving life to a new human person. Thus the couple, while giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the reality of children, who are a living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and a mother. — Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio (The Family)
Natural Family Planning Awareness Week: July 19-25, 2009. The NFP office of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has designated July 19-25 National Natural Family Planning Week. The dates highlight the anniversary of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25), which articulates Catholic beliefs about human sexuality, conjugal love and responsible parenthood. The dates also mark the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne (July 26), the parents of the Blessed Mother and models for married couples. For further information, contact nfp@usccb.org.
Resources
These couples teach NFP in our Diocese. Call for information: Jim and Joan Noll, 341-9063; Joe and Renee Oka 578-8112; Mike and Karen Manhart 513-923-3379. Couple to Couple League 513-471-2000.
Contraception: Why Not? Audio cassette by Dr. Janet Smith, Professor of Moral Theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit.
Websites
http://family.covingtondiocese.org/ — 2009 schedule of NFP classes for the Diocese of Covington
www.ccli.org — The Couple To Couple League International
www.popepaulvi.com — The Pope Paul VI Institute
www.omsoul.com — One More Soul pro-family, pro-life resources
www.theologyofthebody.net — teachings of Pope John Paul II
www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/ — Church teaching on NFP
