Grace, Communication and Trust Through NFP
Faith was part of the conversation from the very beginning for Maria and Tony Lotz. What started as a shared love for Sunday Mass and meaningful conversation soon became the foundation of their relationship—one that continues to shape how they approach marriage, communication, and Natural Family Planning as newlyweds.
When Maria set up a dating profile on the app Hinge, she wrote in her bio that she loved talking about being Catholic — and about Taylor Swift and Marvel movies. On Tony’s profile he had written: “What are Sundays for? God and football.” While both had attended Northern Kentucky University, the two didn’t meet till they found each other on the app. “You actually messaged me and asked if I wanted to go to Mass,” Maria remembers with Tony.
Marriage Prep
They went on their first date in the summer of 2023 and then wed in 2025, not long after taking an NFP class for marriage prep. “I had heard about it when some of my friends started getting married,” Maria shares. “I had started seeing a natural women’s health nurse about that time, so I was even beginning to dabble in charting.” While NFP was newer territory for Tony, he’s come to see it as important for engaged couples. Birth control and contraceptives often “create a false sense of ‘there’s no way to get pregnant,’” he says. In contrast, with NFP there’s always an awareness of life as a possibility— and a gift.
For the newlyweds, one of the challenges and blessings of NFP has been using it in conjunction with Maria’s irregular cycles. “I knew going into practicing NFP that I had irregular cycles, it was just getting to put it into a different, fuller context, of why I’m tracking,” Maria describes. “It’s crazy how much that ties into day-to-day as a married couple: ‘Where am I at in my cycle? What have we decided to do for this cycle?’ I feel lucky that I had some experience already because it’s a little overwhelming when you’re jumping into it.”
Communication
Tony adds that, “As long as we’re both on the same page, whatever happens is whatever happens,” and they’re both at peace with that. “[NFP] makes you talk in a constructive way,” he describes. “We talk until we’ve both said what we’re feeling, and we come to a consensus there.”
Maria says, “It’s similar communication to what we had before [marriage] but obviously the topics are more intimate and specific. It’s helpful we already were trying to practice good communication. I’ve never felt like I couldn’t share something about my health, even if it was not something he’d heard before.”
NFP is also bringing Maria new insights into her own health. Initially, NFP helped her gain a fuller understanding of what happens in each phase of a regular cycle. Now, she’s been able to apply that knowledge to determine which phases her body may need support in. “It’s helped me in working with my health nurse to make recommendations for treatments or medications for helping with hormones that should be increasing or decreasing in certain phases,” she says. “It honestly makes it a lot easier when you can take a chart to someone. It makes it more objective without the stress.”
She adds, “Having the irregularity almost proves to me more how NFP is based on the science of what is happening in a woman’s body… Seeing all the things that have to happen for conception to take place — there’s just so much happening!”
Grace & Surrender
Both Tony and Maria underscore that core aspects of NFP are learning to give your spouse grace and surrender to God’s plan. “In practicing NFP, I think you have to surrender, and with the struggles of my cycle, too, it’s another element of surrender,” says Maria.
Tony says, “With options like birth control, you’re trying to shoehorn God’s plan into your plan. With this, it’s very much God’s plan. If we get pregnant during what we think is a non-fertile period, then it truly was God being like, ‘You were ready for kids, whether you thought so or not!’”
He adds: “It’s understandable to be nervous, especially with irregular cycles. At the end of the day, you’re married to your best friend and one of the foundations of marriage is being intimate: spiritually, emotionally, physically. The baseline of it all with NFP is that you are open to having children, so don’t overthink it to the point where you’ve psyched yourself out.”
Maria’s advice for other newlyweds is this: “It’s typically a totally new ball game for you and also for him. Have patience and understand it won’t be a perfect process. You can have some cycles that are straightforward and some that aren’t, just continue trying to view it from a gratitude perspective. Give yourself grace.”
Written by Savanna Duca. Savanna is a writer and creative strategist with a special interest in art, film, and entrepreneurship. Her favorite authors currently include Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse, and Marilynne Robinson
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