Finding Each Other, Finding Faith
Jessica and Joshua met at Cal State when they found themselves dancing salsa bachata together at an event. It kindled a spark, but Joshua realized at night’s end that he never got his partner’s name. Instagram and a mutual friend came to the rescue and the two were able to find each other’s online profiles and start messaging, learning they both were studying kinesiology.
Patience
Joshua had had a series of bad relationships before Jessica, and told her on their first date that he wasn’t interested in having children. “I don’t believe in love, I don’t really want to get married,’” he recalls saying. But Jessica was patient, and eventually he changed his mind.
“I was the first to say ‘I love you.’ I was the first that thought about marriage – there was never pressure from her,” he says. “It was just… you feel that connection and, call it the Holy Spirit, there was something working inside of me that I was like, ‘I want to marry this woman, I want to spend the rest of my life with her.’”
While Jessica was raised Catholic, she wasn’t practicing at the time, so the two married in a civil ceremony. But a few months later, Joshua started RCIA, and both agreed they’d like to marry in the Church. Their marriage was convalidated on their first anniversary. Jessica remembers how joyful the convalidation made her dad, who had been praying for them. “He was so happy even though it was a lot smaller,” she says. “After he walked me down the aisle, he gave both of us a blessing.”
NFP
Joshua’s RCIA led the couple to hear about NFP and reach out to a CCLI teaching couple. “They got back to us quickly, so we got excited about it, it was something new,” they recall. Both academics, they enjoyed the process of learning NFP. “We’d hunker down, we had our notepads taking all our notes.”
They’re both involved in daily charting, they say. Joshua makes sure Jessica has her thermometer at hand, Jessica inputs her symptoms, and they both participate in interpreting the data. NFP has opened up a new type of communication in their relationship. “It’s a reinforcement of the gravity of the marital act and how you’re inviting God into your relationship,” they say.
“Definitely do it together, even if you’re doing it self-paced,” they advise other newly married couples. “Treat it like a date. Make it fun. If you can treat it like that, it becomes fun, you can joke around… you’re not getting a grade on this.”
Quiet Work
Jessica and Joshua’s story reminds us that marriage is formed over time through patience, grace, and small daily choices to grow together. From a dance floor to a convalidation, from uncertainty about children to embracing fertility education as a shared responsibility, their journey reflects how God works quietly within hearts. When couples approach NFP side by side, with curiosity and even a little joy, it becomes a way of loving.
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.
Couple to Couple League is the premier provider of NFP training for engaged and married couples. Click for more information on our NFP certificate classes or our Natural Plan Intro to NFP program to learn more about NFP.