In college I began to think more about how I might raise my children. And I was also pondering how, with all the choices, would I choose the good or best thing.\u00a0 Over time I realized that I had to turn to God in prayer and ask him, only he knew the long term repercussions of my choices.\u00a0 And I saw that I often chose selfishly and was motivated by greed or fear, not out of generosity or love.\u00a0 Even when I first met Mary Ellen I was still caught up in a charade, trying to impress her.\u00a0\u00a0 Gradually, with reading and experiences, we realized that we had to try to conform our lives to be truly holy, but for a long time it was like actors in a play, going through motions.\u00a0 We did not have a real sense of how to love as God loves.<\/p>\n
When we got engaged Mary Ellen had enrolled us in a class on NFP. And we found that the use of NFP, was an aid to our growth in love, not an impediment.\u00a0 It had a lot of good aspects to it.\u00a0 A book we had read was one about living our faith life with a sporting spirit, that is, going all out, taking chances, really being committed, like you wouldn\u2019t join a team and then play half way. Using NFP supported that approach.\u00a0 First, we were avoiding contraception, but also we had this great joy of knowing when we were making love, it was totally natural.\u00a0 It seemed to me like we were like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.\u00a0 When we were not seeking children we would not make love in the fertile time, but then we would feel this awesome longing for each other but also an awe for the fact that we had this power that temporarily we were not using.\u00a0 We had this power to participate in the creation of another eternal life, to open the portal of life with God but we were not using it.\u00a0 And then when we were seeking children we were also cooperating with God and in a sense putting ourselves totally at his mercy.\u00a0 So we were, and we totally felt that we were cooperating with God on a grand adventure.<\/p>\n
Our marriage was growing into the full embrace that in our dreamy youth we had dared to long for. \u00a0We were in a sense dancing with God, and because we were in harmony with him at this most intimate moment, we could extend that harmony and way of life to other aspects of our marriage, how we spent our time and money, how we selected our job opportunities.\u00a0 Somehow we had managed to orient ourselves so that God was a partner in all of our discussions and activities.\u00a0\u00a0 A deep joy permeated our marriage.<\/p>\n
A time when this decision really helped us was when I was giving our boys their sex talk.\u00a0 Mary Ellen would have me do this when she knew the topic was coming up at school.\u00a0 I would talk to them about how God works in nature to create life and then talk about God as a family, a trinity and being life giving and generous and totally faithful within himself, and how he is love, and he created us to image that.\u00a0 Then after we explored this idea I would tell them how this translates to our physical selves and how mom and dad could plan cooperate with God to bring their siblings into the family when we thought he was inviting another child.\u00a0 Over the years we could come back to this, but it was always so great that I didn\u2019t have to explain away a choice to use contraception.\u00a0 That would mean having to negate the church, negate the power of the holy spirit, negate the integrity of my own actions in the sexual union.\u00a0 It would have introduced all sorts of inconsistencies.\u00a0 The NFP decision could be explained as one always in cooperation with God, in cooperation with the church, in cooperation with Mary Ellen.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we felt overwhelmed in our family life, like we were treading water in an ocean.\u00a0 Just because we were trying to cooperate with God didn\u2019t mean it was easy, but corresponding our lives to Gods will doesn\u2019t mean that, actually probably the opposite.\u00a0 If we are living our marriage as a real life adventure, sometimes it won\u2019t be secure, and sometimes it may seem harrowing.\u00a0 Christ faced death while doing the will of his father, but it worked out in the end.\u00a0 Sometimes our prayer led us to postpone pregnancy, sometimes to seek pregnancy.\u00a0 Like many married couples we had miscarriages that hurt terribly, we have children that cover the spectrum of physical prowess and mental prowess, all of them enrich our family.\u00a0 And all them children take us places spiritually, emotionally, physically that we would never go otherwise.<\/p>\n
In our forties we reached a time when we were postponing children and then menopause occurred.\u00a0 It was probably one of the most painful things I have experienced to have this window of time close on our marriage. For Mary Ellen, her experience was different.\u00a0 She had experienced the raw emotions of conception, the long months of pregnancy, the tsunamis of childbirth.\u00a0 Her emotion was more of relief and acceptance. \u00a0We had loved the thrill of pregnancy and childbirth and all the fun that the children had brought and still bring. We are in awe that we have participated in ringing the great bell of life, sending out its tones for all eternity in the lives of those whom we bore and whom they will bear. \u00a0\u00a0But now we are especially thankful that when we lay down together to drift to sleep we can know that through our entire life we never asked our spouse to do anything unnatural, anything that could hurt them.\u00a0 And we don\u2019t regret our family size as being too large or small, because we had always asked God to guide us, even blindly; we could rest knowing our family is what God desired.\u00a0 In fact, our use of NFP helped Mary Ellen stay healthy, through what we would learn from her charts, which are like a barometer on health.\u00a0 Overall it has been a great experience for us, and in ways too deep to explain in this brief sharing it corresponds with mysteries of God and our faith.<\/p>\n
Tim Jakubisin<\/p>\n
What is NFP?<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n