Author: reneeharris

If you use Natural Family Planning (NFP), it will become an expression and reflection of a way of looking at life that works WITH God’s Providence instead of against it.

Some good things that come from practicing NFP:

It will foster openness to new life.

It will turn sex into something that is received and welcomed, rather than endured, between husband and wife

It will protect you from degrading yourself sexuality with the latest surgical or chemical means.

It will promote a deep and abiding respect of each other’s sexuality.

It will help protect you from making plans based on either fear or lust of the world.

Ponder this: isn’t it amazing how once a month God has orchestrated it naturally so that mind, heart and body can come together in unity for the possibility of creating a new immortal soul through our earthly physical acts? Feelings of joy, gratitude, and awe await us when we finally get to hold one more newborn in our hands. Good things do happen in Christian marriages.

And you will have one of the few things that will last forever.

A child is one of them.

Think about that.

In a home where two hearts are bent on doing the Lord’s Will, Natural Family Planning (NFP) has a way of stacking up the arguments in favor of life.

God can reveal to them whether that inclination to postpone pregnancy once again is for unselfish reasons or if it is born out of a desire for what the world has to offer in its approbations and glamour.

Isn’t it wonderful, that when our sexual passions are not blunted chemically by the Pill, or psychologically emasculated by sterilization, or pleasurably diminished by barrier methods, God can turn these raging rivers of desire – which we thought would once destroy us in our youth – into God’s conduit to create new people in His image?

Passion, now in its true home of marriage, should not be unnaturally fettered, but rather embraced in all its ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s winter, sometimes it’s summer.

You will come to realize that waiting for conception (if you truly need to wait) should not be dominated not by a fear of the future, but by a waiting for God’s greater timing in His plans for our lives.

Why is Natural Family Planning (NFP) called “natural”?

It is called natural because it understands that every few weeks God has designed it so that your wife’s sexual desire for you and the possibility of conceiving come together in a strong tide of sexual passion.

The science of our bodies and the romance of attraction come together “naturally”, on a regular basis, if you don’t mind the pun.

Every month, through God’s Providence, the possibility of creating new life calls us to reconsider our human priorities.

So here’s the real question that living an NFP lifestyle puts before us:

Do we really want to postpone the possible conception of a new little one, made in His image, for that job advance? Or that extra educational degree? Or that bigger house in the suburbs?

It is at this time that God gives us an opportunity, through the use of our sexual passion (not despite), to be able to LUCIDLY re-evaluate where our real earthly rewards will be.

It is encouraging to know that we don’t have to do what everyone else is doing, that God really does meet our needs, and that children do increase our quality of life, not decrease it.

I hope to one day be able to look back at my life and be grateful that I freely accepted, and managed to the fullest, the gifts that God wanted to give me.

And I hope every woman will see her offspring as the proverbial talents that they are, given by God for her to raise.

As a young mom I attended a regular women’s Bible study and really enjoyed it at first.

I recommended it to every stay-at-home mom I knew. It was nice to come to a place where my children were cared for while I had uninterrupted time to talk with other women, listen to a Christian speaker, do crafts, and eat. I have no doubt that this is the way the study group was started and should have been run. But after the birth of my second son, some things started bothering me. Some of the comments that went over my head before, were suddenly starting to get to me:

“I can’t WAIT until Jordan starts preschool – he’s driving me crazy!”…”I deserve my own free time – with all that I do for my family”…”My husband is getting a vasectomy for Christmas” …” I am so done having kids.”

A few years later I mentioned that I was carrying twins and then it was “Glad it’s you, not me!”… “You’re finished now, right?”… “You want more? You won’t be saying that after your twins are born!” It would have been one thing if this attitude only came from the non-Christian newcomers who wouldn’t know better, but when it was the churchgoers, the leaders and the speakers saying this, I decided my time was better spent elsewhere.

Sometimes you just need to be bold enough to make a break from some female gatherings that are in the end just excuses to whine and complain.

In a perfect world, your friends, family members and even your physician would be cheering you on in this particular pursuit of godliness, of being open to life, but that will more than likely not happen.

Peer pressure doesn’t only exist for young people.

But this time the stakes are higher. Are family members voicing their opinions about you either having a baby too soon after you’re married, spacing your children too closely together, or deciding to have more than the national average of less than 2 children? Or, if you’re further along than that with more children, the comments like: “you have your hands full”, “you must be rich to have all those kids”, or “do you ever get time to yourself?” are starting to get old and tiresome to hear and you’re tired of being the odd-one-out.

Here are some things I recommend:

Limit who you talk to about your family size, birth control, or anything related to your immediate family that will stress you out. Limit the amount of time you spend with friends who live the contraceptive/sterilization lifestyle (you will know them by their words and deeds, especially in the way they treat their offspring). It was difficult to pinpoint the reason we felt so out of place at the time, but now that I know so many other “open to life” couples, the differences are staggering – and refreshing.

Find couples and families whose lives are correctly prioritized. When you have a child-rearing question or just want a listening ear, these are the people to whom you should be confiding. I was amazed to find that by limiting the topics of conversations related to children with those who didn’t get it, the amount of unnecessary tension I had been feeling was greatly reduced.

You need to be wise enough to discern the difference between a wise counselor and just another person with an opinion.

We make it a point to actively pursue wisdom from God, and He has yet to let us down.

I know as teens we were taught to “visualize where you should be in five years,” but that’s difficult to project in the areas of character when you are still growing in wisdom, as you should be.

My recommendation: Don’t try to figure out the WHOLE future with the wisdom that you have today or you could overwhelm yourself.

Trust God that He will give you the tools you need at the time you need them to deal with life’s challenges. That’s why some of those pre-marriage counseling books can be depressing. They assume there is no active role of the Holy Spirit in maturing you through marriage.

For us, happiness snuck up on us when we weren’t trying to exploit it at all costs; it just happened as a result of continually trying to do the right thing. In the eyes of the world, as well as many Christians, we probably looked foolish – having a baby before “the right job”, not having the finances to fit in another pregnancy, etc. But with the birth of each child, God has provided a response to our physical needs and desires. God has given us ideas and ways to slash our spending of what we thought was necessary and He has surprised us by giving us more contentment and joy in other areas that we would not have predicted… and several times has even provided for us through a better job or pay raise. “… the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight” (I Cor. 3:19).

Open to Life? Or Overtaken by the Contraceptive Mentality?

Many people are afraid that they would have to sacrifice something in their current lifestyle in order to have more children. To be honest, there often is a change in one’s lifestyle – for the better. Actually, I would call it a change in one’s priorities.

Suddenly, when your perception changes, the extra stuff that was once seemed necessary becomes a nuisance – including the nights out, the extra car payments, the weekends filled with building on or remodeling the house, and so on. All these things are absolutely not wrong by themselves, but they do take on more meaning when done with, or for, your family, not in replacement of the family.

Are you replacing the children you could have had for extra vacations and an RV at retirement?

“MOTH” by Steve & Teri Maxwell.

Something that has helped us tremendously in the day-to-day routine of raising kids is to have our family on a schedule.

We now have more time during the day, get more done, have time to rest, and I don’t have to “think” about what my kids should do from hour to hour. Books on scheduling are plentiful but what I found most helpful is one written by Steven and Teri Maxwell called Managers Of Their Home (a.k.a. MOTH). In it, the Maxwells give practical advice and take the reader step by step through implementing a schedule that works for them.

What gives the book most credibility is the fact that the authors are raising a large family of their own, and have included stories and examples from other moms of large families. Even if you don’t consider yourself a person with natural organization skills, this book is for you.