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An Interesting Concept
By Mona Lease
Hi,
all!! The following is in my
August, Darke County Right to Life newsletter. I draw your attention to
phrases
like "attuned to and respecting body signs", "learns
self-control", "working within the body's (God's) design", and
"material happiness is short-lived."
My
husband Gregg and I were married
10 years ago. With the upcoming wedding, we looked into Natural Family
Planning
(NFP) as a way to space children. NFP is working to understand the
woman's
natural fertility cycle by being attuned to and respecting the signs of
her
body while prayerfully (respectfully?) discerning to postpone or
achieve
pregnancy.We heard that NFP strengthens marriages because it increases
communication and it helps the couple strive to make sexuality a gift,
not
using one another for pleasure. All these benefits sounded great, but I
was a
little skeptical at first, even though there was a claim of 99%
effectiveness.
I was wondering if it would really work. We were pleasantly surprised
at the
effectiveness. As we are mindful month by month that God is the author
of life;
we practice NFP, not as birth control, but with openness to life and a
readiness to accept any gift God chooses to give us. Four planned
children
later, we consider ourselves blessed that we found this "School of
Virtue", as we sometimes call it. I call it the "School of
Virtue" because it is not always easy, but it helps to strengthen our
marriage. The man learns self-control and the woman learns
self-donation, which
aid a couple in truly loving each other and not using the other.
As
we become more involved with the
pro-life movement, it struck me of one of the wonderful correlations
between
the pro-life movement and NFP. Many contraceptives work as
abortifaciants or
could possibly cause an abortion if conception occurs. Natural Family
Planning,
on the other hand, respects God's design of a woman's body and works
within
that design instead of trying to change it. Another correlation is the
openness
to life that many NFP users have. Natural Family Planning involves
responsible
parenthood and the couple begins to ask, "Why not have another
child?" versus the common question asked by society today, "Why would
you want another child?" When we first started using NFP, I had a plan
for
my perfect family size - 3 kids - at the most 4. The beautiful thing
about NFP
is that it slowly changed my heart to see the beauty of each soul and
see the
joy of being a Mother. Now Gregg and I think "You know, we could have
more
than 4 kids." Material happiness is short lived, where the joy of
children
fills the heart forever. By being open, it seems that I become more
like clay
in God's hands, more moldable. Being that we were both pro-lifers,
Natural
Family Planning was a great fit to continue pro-life efforts. Author's
name
withheld.
I
realize this is slanted to God.
So - if you take out God and look at it again - it still leaves
respecting each
other, being responsible for our decisions and the resulting
situations, and
knowing your body. Those are good things - right???
Remember
the kiddies and our
service people. Be good to the furry and feathered ones out there. Be
safe and
healthy. See ya next time. Ever Toodles!! MONA
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