When you choose to abstain from pregnancy in your marriage, it’s not happening to you. You are choosing it.
It’s important we take responsibility for our actions. This doesn’t mean you replace the frustrations with happy thoughts and you pretend it’s easy.
Self-mastery isn’t easy. Virtue building isn’t easy. But, it is worthwhile and an opportunity for serious growth in your own personal saint-making and that of your spouse and family.
When you have discerned to abstain during the fertile period of the woman’s cycle to avoid pregnancy, you need to recognize that it IS hard work because it is natural to desire to come together during ovulation (sex is about bonding AND babies).
Now, you might find yourself in a situation (medical conditions, mental health, etc.) that pregnancy would be INCREDIBLY hard or life-threatening and you need to abstain. You are still choosing to abstain! While the situation is hard, you make the choice: abstinence or birth control. As Catholics, we are not allowed to use birth control, even in what situations might seem most dire and scary.
When I use the phrase “might seem” it is because God is ultimately in charge of all situations. He has a plan for us. And, this is where NFP challenges and tests us in our human nature and our vices and our struggles to trust God 100% with our lives – including our family planning. I get it! It sounds so easy to pop a pill or put on a condom, but the illusion of control has been so well marketed to us we forget that even forms of birth control do NOT have 100% effectiveness rates for avoiding pregnancy. NFP and birth control have similar effectiveness statistics. The surest way to avoid a pregnancy is abstinence.
When using Natural Family Planning (NFP) you embark on the ultimate journey of trust and surrender, especially at a time in history where women’s health has been narrowly categorized to mean access to abortion & birth control. Women are constantly being fear-mongered by empty promises of control, when in reality, understanding our fertility and how our bodies work is our greatest source of freedom and opportunity for self-possession.
Not only is choosing NFP a different way of practicing family planning versus the use of contraception, it’s a different way of thinking altogether when implementing it into your marriage. You are entrusting God with your fertility with the potential to create new human life (which is a natural result of sex – we so easily forget this!) and we also use our free-will and intellect to practice responsible parenthood.
Not using NFP in your marriage is NOT wrong. However, you are asked to use your reason to pay attention to the needs of your marriage and family regardless if you actively implement NFP into your marriage. You are called to be an active, responsible participant in your life. This approach requires discernment and communication with God and your spouse. I am NOT saying it’s an idiotic approach. What I am saying is that you need to use your intellect and reason God gifted you with and be open to what He asks of you (which may be openness to life or may not be for a time) and only you can determine that with God & your spouse.
Completely relying on birth control and never welcoming God into your marriage is also problematic because we separate the potential for creating human life, which is in part what sex is intended for. We say “no” to the plan God has created and the way in which He designed sex and marriage. In the Catholic Church, the use of contraception is a moral evil because we sever the goodness of sex and we open up the potential for lust and use.
Using NFP means proper discernment, charting your cycle, and remaining open to the potential of life, while using your God-given reason and intellect to participate in planning your family. You are human and God doesn’t expect you to choose the hardest thing because that’s necessary or the “only holy way” to life. He asks you to choose the path in which He calls you to and sometimes it’s really hard and, at other times, it’s not that hard (or it’s hard in completely unexpected ways).
Don’t make something hard when it doesn’t need to be. And, don’t avoid the hard because you’ve bought into the lie that life is always supposed to be easy.
Take responsibility for your life, welcome God into it, and ask Him for the graces you need to live out your marriage and family life. We are on a journey and He is walking with us.
Remember, you are an active participant in your life and the choices you make don’t happen to you. You are choosing them and this is a good to be able to do so. God’s mercy is always available to us if we’ve made mistakes or we made the wrong choice – run to God the Father and run to confession!
Let’s pray for each other!
