Recognizing God’s Plan through NFP
Through Natural Family Planning, a couple’s journey from uncertainty and control to trust and openness has transformed their marriage. Used rightly, NFP goes hand in hand with a vision that acknowledges that even if God’s timing isn’t always ours, new life is always a precious gift.
The McGuires
The McGuires began marriage using contraceptives but now call NFP “the best-kept secret of the Catholic Church.” Describing their mindset when marrying, Renee and Kerry say, “We didn’t really want the ‘old men in Rome’ to be making the decisions about our life. We did it how we wanted to do it.” While at the time they considered themselves “pro-life,” they hadn’t embraced the whole Church, they say.
Renee gradually became uneasy about using the pill, and stopped taking it a few years into marriage as they felt more open to children. They describe the next part of their story as like a movie, as they got pregnant on their first attempt and took for granted that would mean bringing a healthy baby home from the hospital nine months later.
But a few weeks into pregnancy, Renee miscarried, just before her and Kerry’s shared birthday. “We were sitting on the couch the day after the miscarriage in a state of shock and not processing it well,” they remember. “A couple weeks passed and we tried to start to have another child, and then Renee wasn’t getting pregnant,” Kerry says, “and it didn’t happen like in the movies again.”
Graces of Marriage
In her grief, Renee turned to researching her fertility, and realized the role the pill may have played in her miscarriage and fertility struggle. They continue, “It was a dark period of our marriage. Where we hadn’t been open to life… all those graces that were given to us in our marriage, we hadn’t accepted them. God used that time to bring us down so we could come back. We didn’t even know the graces that were available to us at that time to help us grieve.”
After months of trying to conceive, the couple’s NFP journey within the Church began when Renee picked up a Church bulletin and saw an NFP ad: “Trying to conceive?” Knowing they needed help, they signed up. From the first class, Renee was all in, grateful for the biological, physiological, and theological foundations of NFP. “We’re gonna teach this one day,” she remembers knowing at once. She adds, “I also knew it was probably not a good idea to tell Kerry that yet!”
After four NFP classes the McGuires became pregnant. Beyond practically helping the couple to conceive, they describe the class as gradually restoring a peace to their marriage and showing them how “the Church isn’t a Church of ‘no.’” Rather, through its marriage teachings, it’s trying to help couples not have to experience the pain and guilt they had from using contraceptives. Like a parent calling “no” to a child reaching toward a hot stove, “You’re not trying to limit,” they say. “You’re trying to protect.”
Recognizing God’s Timing
After having two sons, the McGuires used NFP to postpone pregnancy for a bit. Once hoping to conceive again, they experienced the challenge of not becoming pregnant for a while, even while knowing the best days to conceive. “We’re at our parish helping people get pregnant and I couldn’t get pregnant myself,” Renee describes. “But, our faith had strengthened… It wasn’t a crisis. We approached it knowing for whatever reason this isn’t the plan right now.”
Now the McGuires are parents of five, but that experience has helped them teach other couples to trust God’s timing. “We’ve had it too fast and then too slow, in our opinion,” they say. “God’s timing is perfect, but we did not agree at the moment!”
The McGuires ask couples they teach to share on their chart where they are with pregnancy — whether trying to postpone or achieve. Most of all, they encourage them to stay open to reevaluating frequently. They’ve seen how quickly human plans and desires can change. What never changes is God’s design for us and the beauty of new life.
About learning NFP, Kerry says, “We call it the best decision of our marriage.”edicine, determined to bring back the importance of patient-doctor relationships to improve the overall health of the patient.
Why is NFP so important? Take the Natural Plan course for a quick intro. Learn Natural Family Planning – as an engaged couple or as a married couple.
Original article can be found in Family Foundations magazine, a quarterly benefit to our benefactors and supporters.