Joyfully Sharing NFP
Ben and Rita Pehl were both raised in farming families, Ben in Montana and Rita in Nebraska. Ben grew up in a Protestant family and later had a conversion to Catholicism. The Pehls are a full-time farming family currently living in Montana with their three children. Ben and Rita became a CCL teaching couple in 2019. In addition to teaching live online classes, they are the NFP coordinators for the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings, Montana. Their Catholic faith, marriage, and fertility awareness journey offer a powerful testimony of trust, love, and life. Ultimately, their passion is promoting NFP as an integral part of marriage prep in their area.
Céline: Ben and Rita, tell me how you met?
Rita: Of course! Ben first came to Nebraska to get some ‘off-the-farm’ experience. He was working for a farming cooperative, and I was teaching at the time. I attended an educational workshop at a hotel convention center, and Ben happened to be attending a farming workshop at the same hotel. We ran into each other in the hallway and struck up a conversation right there and then! We were so comfortable talking to each other from the start that one of my coworkers thought we were already friends! He gave me his number and I called him a few days later. He lived an hour away, so we would take turns visiting each other every week, and after becoming close, we were married in 2013.
Céline: Ben, how were the Church’s teachings on fertility and family life influential in your conversion to Catholicism?
Ben: Before Rita and I met, I became curious about the Catholic faith through the witness of a Catholic priest I was friends with. When I met Rita, we shared a lot of information and books with each other, which was how I began studying Catholicism extensively. I was really impressed with how much research the Catholic Church had done over the last 2000 years on perennial moral issues, and, in recent times, on newer issues like contraception. It was foreign to me because a lot of Protestant churches don’t have teachings on contraception, leaving it up to the individual to make moral decisions about family planning through prayer. The more I read and researched Catholic marriage and fertility awareness, the more the Church’s teaching made sense to me. Eventually, I attended RCIA and Rita attended with me, which really helped us grow in our relationship together.
Céline: How did you learn about NFP and fertility awareness?
Rita: We learned about NFP partly through our marriage preparation. We also learned from a good friend from college who got married a few years before we did. My friend and her husband placed us in touch with the couple who taught them NFP. We took our class from them. The NFP class and the couple who taught it to us were amazing. They essentially inspired us to become teachers one day!
Céline: How has using NFP helped your communication with one another flourish?
Rita: When we had our first daughter, Sophia, she had a tongue tie we didn’t know about. She wasn’t feeding or gaining weight very well, and we had a lot of sleepless nights. At the time, we didn’t feel like we were in a position to handle another pregnancy right away. I’m a rule follower by nature, and I was anxious about following all the postpartum rules of NFP. The long stretches of abstinence were challenging. It was really hard for me to be vulnerable with Ben about the worries that I was keeping bottled up inside.
I eventually shared my anxieties about charting with him. He told me, “The ‘worst’ thing that could happen is we have a baby, and having a baby is a beautiful thing! If we have a baby, then it must be God’s plan for our family.” I felt this incredible weight lifted off my shoulders that I had been placing on myself. I just knew that Ben loved me too much to blame me if we unexpectedly got pregnant. He trusted in God’s plan more than I could in that moment.
Céline: What were some of the challenges you experienced as newlyweds using NFP, and how did you work together to overcome them?
Rita: When we were trying to postpone pregnancy early on in our marriage, it was challenging. We had to abstain from the marital embrace, especially during fertile periods when I was most interested in it. When I wasn’t fertile, I didn’t have the same energy for it as I did when I was in ‘Phase 2.’ However, having those times of abstinence really helped us grow in emotional intimacy. We learned that is just as important as physical intimacy. There are so many ways that we continued to show our love and intimacy for each other during those times of abstinence. It helped our relationship flourish. It strengthened our Catholic marriage and we grew in our fertility awareness.
Ben: Looking back, I think all the time we spent together before marriage, getting to know each other and going on dates, really made the difficult parts of NFP when we were abstaining easier for us. We already had a foundation of friendship and emotional intimacy before we were married. We carried it into our marriage. Learning to live together in marriage is an adjustment. The stress can impact a woman’s cycles, which is also a learning curve. We experienced that stress after the first fifteen or so cycles. The confidence that came from having experience really made practicing NFP that much easier.
Céline: What parallels do you see in using natural fertility methods and farming life as a couple that comes from a heritage of farming families?
Ben: As a full-time farmer, 100% of our income comes from growing crops. Life teaches over time that everything is a gift from God—from our fertility and the children God gives us, to the soil and rain that grow our crops. There is good soil and bad soil. Good rain and bad rain. But ultimately everything that happens is a part of God’s plan and His Providence. We have had some difficult farming years, and in recent times, we have also had some struggles with fertility and miscarriage. Concerning all the blessings we have received in our work and family lives, we have come to realize that we are stewards of God’s gifts and that sometimes our plans and His plans are different. Ultimately, surrendering to His divine plan for our family has been a true gift.
— Written by Celine Gaeta, contributing writer for Family Foundations magazine.