Friday, July 30, 2010

Natural Family Planning Awareness Week!

This week is Natural Family Planning awareness week! This year's theme is "Trust: God has a Plan for Your Marriage".... and I must say that I love the theme! Natural Family Planning week always happens the week surrounding Sts. Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary. What saints are more fitting to celebrate, but those who gave us Mary... who then had the ultimate trust in God for his plan for her marriage to Joseph.

Trust, while I hope that all couples preparing for marriage have trust in each other, I know that sometimes that is not the case. Unfortunately, many more do not allow room for trusting God in their marriage! I know couples out there who have conceived while "actively contracepting" and other couples who have struggled to conceive with such longing to be blessed with a child. (I am by no means making light of anyone who struggles with fertility challenges, that is a terrible burden to bear and I would feel it to be one of the worst.) These situations out there are evidence to me that children are truly a gift from God. Although, I sometimes feel as though people are more comfortable with the secular saying "Everything happens for the reason."

Our relatively brief experience of NFP thus far really does allow for trust in God's plan for us. We are truly his instruments through our actions in our time here. We must:
  • Trust, that He will give us judgement on knowing his will in our life. Not only in procreation, but in all aspects of our life.
  • Trust, that He will bless us with a child when the time is right. It is after all amazing that any of us are here, since there is such a narrow time frame in a woman's cycle in which it is possible to conceive (approximately 24 hours every +/-28 days)
Matt and I are very open in discussing this aspect of our marriage, especially with couples around our age. This is another way we have experienced trust in our marriage... we must trust that we can find the right words to explain NFP and also trust that others will be at least be accepting of our choice and why we feel so passionate about sharing our story.

1 comment:

  1. I've loved the theme this year, too. And I agree about trusting that the appropriate words will come to us to explain NFP and the Church's teaching regarding marriage and sexuality.

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