Living Humanae Vitae – Page 2

The strange in between {Living Humanae Vitae part 3}

May 30, 2018

This week’s installment comes from a dear friend from my Steubenville days who is approaching her first wedding anniversary this summer. She is a beautiful, faithful woman who gave many years of service to the Lord before finally meeting her Prince Charming. As she shares from her experience, marriage hasn’t necessarily been a fairy tale. She was generous and humble enough to allow us a peek at the other side of the NFP coin: subfertility.

We started taking NFP classes a few months before our wedding. I had already been charting for a while. I took copious notes, because that’s what I do. I have always been a rule follower and so I figured all my beloved and I would have to do was follow the rules.

So there we went with tracking temperatures and mucus and having the conversations you can have before you’re married. The conversations came easily, of course we were open to life. It was a no brainer. I was also 34 when we wed, so I felt like a ticking time bomb in regards to my fertility.

We were married on July 29, 2017. We had 8 priests concelebrate our wedding. The church where I was a youth minister for 6 years was packed. It was everything I had ever dreamt of and even more. We honeymooned in Rome, got our marriage blessed by the Pope, traveled to Paris for my artist husband to have a full heart and then went onto Lourdes for me to thank Mama Mary for sending the husband I had begged her for 6 years before in that very spot. I prayed for a baby, having figured that if she got me a husband she would give me a baby.

We came home. I was late. I was, however, not pregnant. Test after test and I wasn’t pregnant. You might as well have ripped my heart out with all those negative tests, because I felt like I knew what was best for us, that we were ready.

We have followed the rules and still no baby.

See, that’s the strange in-between of NFP. You haven’t been ruled infertile, but you also haven’t conceived. You’re open to life and have discerned it and nothing is happening. This strange in-between is where the evil one tries to work his way in. And this in-between place can begin to make you feel not “Catholic” enough.

We are good, NFP following Catholics, we follow the rules, we have fairly good relationships with the Lord and we aren’t pregnant.

And this? This where the judgment creeps in.

Because my sisters, you’re not Catholic enough if you don’t breathe on your spouse at some point during your honeymoon and get pregnant.

Here we are around the 10 month mark of our marriage and there’s no one growing in my womb. The judgment – whether perceived or actual – is so hard. Because when you do everything right and you still aren’t pregnant people start to ask to questions or to make assumptions or to judge and that’s… really awful.

But God is breaking through the strange in-between. I went on a retreat for the wives of the members of the lay religious community my husband is a part of. The theme was unbeknownst to me: Joy in Sorrow.

Imagine my surprise when out came the overflowing tears, the pain and the sorrow of my heart for not being holy enough and for not being Catholic enough and for following the rules and still not conceiving and how hard that is.

These women, they got me. And in that moment, they spoke to my heart and encouraged me to see the joy in front of me and to not miss the blessings around me in the midst of the suffering. They spoke the truth in love to me: that God is good and faithful and that only my husband and I could possibly know what’s going on with our fertility and to trust the Lord.

I was surrounded by a room full of women who had the lives and the children I have always dreamt of and I wasn’t jealous.

And so in the midst of all of this, when it feels like everyone else has a sweet baby to cuddle and we don’t, we remain faithful, because no matter how much you discern, no matter how much you plan, no matter how carefully you follow the rules and still things aren’t turning out the way they are “supposed” to, you discover that God who is the author of life wants to teach us something new in this strange in-between.

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, guest post, large family, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, motherhood, NFP, pregnancy, Suffering

Suffering, surrender, and seven boys: {Living Humanae Vitae part 2}

May 21, 2018

I’m honored to introduce you to these next contributions to the Humanae Vitae series – their story is both extraordinary and unusual, and has the potential to open a dialogue about a rarely-discussed aspect of NFP; namely, that NFP is optional.

Not optional as in “one of a variety of options for managing your fertility,” (as Catholics we believe that contraception is immoral – see CCC 239) but optional as in “there is no compulsion to practice NFP at all.”

In fact, some couples choose to place their fertility entirely in the hands of Providence and live out a radical openness to life. I’d like to introduce you to one such couple today.

When Morgan first contacted me about contributing to this series I was blown away, not because her story was “too intense,” as she told me many people have found it, but because it reminded me a bit of Sts. Zelie and Louis Martin. (Morgan disclosed that both she and her husband only ever wanted to enter religious life, but found that God was calling them to something else entirely.)

This is their story. Their story won’t be everybody’s story, and that’s okay. NFP is a beautiful discipline that, when used for right reasons in the right way, is completely in line with the Church’s teaching. I am immensely grateful to be able to avail myself of it. We are free to make discernments using NFP, and we are free to accept the gift of children coming as they may, according to our discernment of God’s call for us. Because every couple is unique, family stories can unfold in very different ways. This is a story, though, that gave me a lot to think about.

———–

My husband Joseph and I met while we were freshman at the University of Notre Dame and were married after our junior year. We knew from the start that NFP was just not for us and that we wanted to welcome children as they came.

Our oldest son, Thomas, was born right after our graduation at the end of our senior year. Our next son, John Patrick, was born a year and a half later, and our third son, Andrew, was born a year after that.

Andrew was born very sick, but no doctor was able to diagnose him. He relied on feeding tubes, had developmental delays, would turn blue with breathing trouble, and was the fussiest baby I had ever encountered. With three boys in three years and our closest family members a 10-hour drive away, we were lost and completely stressed out.

So many nights were spent holding a screaming baby that was turning blue while we would meditate together on the suffering of our Lord. Never have I felt closer to Our Lady of Sorrows than I did those nights at home or in the Pediatric ICU.

When Andrew was one, we found out we were expecting baby number four. Even though our life was seemingly filled to the brim with chaos, it never even crossed our minds to avoid a pregnancy, nor did we ever think to be afraid of welcoming more little souls into our family.

Boy number four, Philip, was born healthy. When he was six months old we found out we were pregnant with number five. Right before our fifth child was born, Andrew took a turn for the worse and was once again admitted into the ICU. The following week our fifth son, James, was born even sicker than Andrew, and two days after that Thomas, our eldest, lost the ability to walk.

In a span of 10 days we had one child in the ICU, a baby who was born with the expectation of needing life support within days, and now suddenly our oldest son was found to have a mass in the marrow of his femur.

James and Andrew ended up both being fed by feeding tubes, needing breathing assistance, and taking more medications than I can possibly remember.

Thomas ended up not having cancer, but still has to has scans every so often to check his leg. I always thought I would be in a convent being called to prayer by bells. Instead, I found myself cloistered with infants and being called to prayer by screams, alarming feeding pumps, machines alerting me that a child has stopped breathing, or nightly seizures.

I was not spending my days adoring Our Lord in the Eucharist, but I did and do get the beautiful chance to serve Him in these children and their many needs!

For the first time in our marriage, I told Joseph that maybe we should learn NFP and try to avoid getting pregnant just until I got the hang of taking care of two kids with severe medical needs, homeschooling, and life in general. We weren’t totally at peace with the thought of NFP,but decided we would go ahead and learn.

By that time James was seven months old, and right after we decided to learn NFP we found out baby number six was on the way.

In a way, another pregnancy was a relief. The idea of using NFP did not bring us peace at all, and surrendering to the will of God will always bring peace. At the same time, I was terrified that this baby would also be sick.

I wasn’t sure if I could handle everything, and I knew putting the kids in school was not an option because Andrew and James were just too susceptible to even the most minor things. We’ve had ambulance rides and ICU stays for the common cold, ear infections, and runny noses, etc; school and the germs that it brings was simply not an option for us.

Matthew was born healthy in the midst of so much chaos. James and Andrew had nearly 20 hospital trips that year, and it was during that year that we were given some hard news: no doctor in the world had ever seen the disease that the boys have, and therefore there was no treatment, no cure,and no research.

I distinctly remember getting that news in our front yard on the phone. The first thing I did was call my husband, and the next thing I did was put a frantic call in to our beloved pediatrician.

The pediatrician gave me words that I so needed to hear at that moment and would come to really shape our outlook. He told me that Our Lord is doing a beautiful thing in asking us to trust Him over and over again. What a gift that no one in this world can help us; we can do nothing but rely on the Divine Healer.

His words have become something that we have meditated on over and over again.

What does it really mean to trust in God and hand over our family to Him?

What does it look like to radically surrender completely to God?

Well, right now it means that baby number seven is on the way.

That is seven boys in eight years. We haven’t prayed for a healthy baby, even though we know there is a chance this baby will be sick. The only thing we have been praying for is that the will of God be done, and that we are open to all of His gifts and graces. God is so incredibly generous in His giving,if only we allow ourselves to receive them.

Our story would be different if there were financial concerns, health problems for one of the adults, or an inflexible work schedule. However, with our lives right now, the only way we have found that we can respond to our call for holiness and openness to life is to set aside our fears and give a “Fiat”.

Our children might not live as long as most, and they certainly take more care than most other children, but they have the same beautiful immortal souls and are made in the image of God.

Their lives are worth the sacrifice no matter how long or short they are— how can we not say yes to that?

For our family, being open to life means also being open to pain, suffering, and to death; but, really, it means that for everyone, just in different ways.

I asked Joseph if he had any input for our story and he said, “Well holiness requires a magnanimous soul. That is all we are doing, trying to give as generously as the God who gives to us.”Every day the Prayer of Generosity is prayed in our house; may God give all of us the grace to be generous to each other, our children, and to God Himself!

“Dearest Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve, to give and not count the cost, to fight and not heed the wounds, to toil and not seek for rest, to labor and not ask for reward save that of knowing I am doing your will” – St Ignatius

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, NFP, Sex, Suffering

This couple went a year without sex (and lived to tell the tale): {Living Humanae Vitae part 1}

May 14, 2018

Our first contributor wishes to remain anonymous because of the personal nature of her piece, but was generous enough to share her story here. Following the back to back arrival of their 4 children, this couple laid their cards on the table and discerned that in light of the challenges presented by parenting, the aftereffects of pregnancy, and the husband’s mobility-impairing back injury, the best course of action for their marriage was to abstain entirely for an entire year postpartum while awaiting the return of fertility.

What follows is a thoughtful, candid, and inspiring glimpse into one couple’s year of marital abstinence. While this might not be everyone’s story, I know from the comments, emails, and messages I’ve fielded over the years that they are not alone in their struggle or in this seemingly radical decision to table sexual intimacy for a prolonged season.

I’ve heard plenty of arguments for the necessity of regular sex in marriage and I can see those eyes widening at the thought of an entire year of abstinence but…what about couples with a prolonged deployment? With a devastating medical diagnosis? With horrific injuries from a car accident?

The truth is there are plenty of circumstances that require radical fidelity and sometimes, yes, abstinence, throughout the course of a marriage. This is one such story, and you may find yourself surprised by the outcome…

We tiptoe around this. All the time. Heck, most of the time we can’t even keep abstinence, continence, chastity and celibacy straight.

We tiptoe around it when we talk about NFP. We raise eyebrows it and call it “using NFP to avoid a pregnancy.” We talk fertility and charting and real life and all that, but we don’t get nitty gritty.

Why? Well, because it’s too personal. Because it exposes fragile things and brave decisions that stay between a husband and a wife.

But. In the interest of encouraging the many other couples who are either thinking about this, worrying about this or living out this situation currently, I’m going to write, ever so obliquely, about what my husband and I decided was right and prudent for our family, for our sanity, and for our faith in the theology that is imprinted on our very bodies by God: we abstained from sex for an entire year.

It’s funny, writing it out like that now, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal since we’re past it. But at the time… whoa.

I have a theory that I’ve seen play out in my life and the lives of other Catholic women in the past few years: couples take NFP classes, get married, and begin having the world’s cutest babies. Then they have some more. And at some point, whether that’s at the second, third, fourth, fifth, or nineteenth kid, the parents say: UNCLE. We need a little break. And that’s when they get serious–truly serious–about charting and monitoring their fertility.

For us, that came after the birth of our forth cherub. My husband and I had a frank discussion about how we were feeling about more kids in the immediate future. The damage to his spine was flaring worse than ever, making the physicality of caring for little kids a real difficulty. For me, I had just delivered my fourth baby in six years. I felt depleted.

We both knew that the easiest time to get pregnant unintentionally is in the post-partum and nursing phase of fertility, before the menstrual cycle becomes regular again and while hormones are having a year-long fiesta of randomness.

We both felt like for the time being, we were not “open to life”—not forever, not for the rest of our marriage, but for the short term.

So we made the decision together: we’d abstain from sex for, more or less, a year.

How did we survive that? What do you do, when you’re not having sex?

I think in today’s society, we just take sex as a given and marital intimacy for granted. A man can’t really go a year without having sex, right? A couple can’t really be continent for that long, right? It’s impossible and cruel, right?

No, it’s not impossible. My husband and I are very much alive and in love–and the year-long drought is over, we’re both happy to say. And as far as it being cruel, it’s not. It’s actually the very opposite of cruel–it was one of the most loving, generous, uniting crosses we’ve carried together.

So many times during that year, when the kids were sick and the baby wouldn’t go to sleep and the world was caving in around us, I’d look at my husband and say, “I know this is all incredibly awful right now, but. BUT. It would all be so much harder if I was either pregnant or worried that I was pregnant.”

As Christians, we are called to lay down our lives for each other–and this is, as Jesus taught, the greatest possible love–the love that sacrifices. That’s what we did for a year–sacrificed. And yeah, we watched a lot of tv. HA! But there are no other ploys, tricks, shortcuts, loopholes or secrets to making it easier. The only thing that makes it easier is knowing it’d be harder if you were pregnant.

Well, I take that back. There was one other thing that got us through that year–and that was knowing that it would be, about, just a year. All my kids have pretty much weaned themselves at 12 months. And I knew from charting before being married (and during the space between my second and third babies) that my cycles, post-nursing, go back to being pretty standard, with obvious fertility markers.

And that brings us to now. Our baby is going to be 2 this summer, and due to that year of discipline (coupled with just using days post-ovulation), we’ve earned a little breathing room, and I’m not currently growing a baby. Praise hands.

This isn’t every couple’s story. Some women have zero reliable fertility markers. Some have more yellow stickers than Dr. Hilgers himself. There are about as many different crosses with NFP as there are couples who use it.

I offer this here because that year of abstinence, that was our cross. The crazy thing is though, if you ask my hubby or me about our best year yet as a couple together… we both say it was the past year. How is it that a sex-free year could be the best of your life?

Because intimacy is built one deep conversation at a time–one soul-barring, fear-challenging, dream-sharing conversation at a time. And since we weren’t being intimate in one sense, we learned to channel our vulnerability in other ways–but always toward each other.

It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t easy. It’s definitely definitely definitely not something we want to repeat. But we did grow.

YES, BUT HOW DO YOU HANDLE THE ABSTINENCE??? you say. Ok! I don’t know! You take it day by day! You talk to your sister, your friend, your facebook support group. You surround yourself with voices that tell you you can do this. You keep three things ever before you:

One, this is not forever.

Two, other people are in this same boat with me (send me an email! let’s tawk!).

Three, remember that we ask our priests to live celibate, continent lives EVERY DAY. Pick a priest during your desert experience and pray for his intentions.

For our wedding, a beloved priest and friend gave us a beautifully framed copy of the Exhortation Before Marriage. It was commonly read at weddings in place of a homily in the pre-Vatican II wedding rite. It fits this topic, and so many others:

No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May, then, this love with which you join your hands and hearts today never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on. And if true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness that may be allotted to man in this vale of tears. The rest is in the hands of God. Nor will God be wanting to your needs, he will pledge you the life-long support of his graces in the Holy Sacrament which you are now going to receive.

That exhortation sits on the dresser in our bedroom, which is pretty darn appropriate.

The “Living Humanae Vitae” Series:

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Culture of Death, Evangelization, Family Life, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, motherhood, NFP, Sex, Theology of the Body

Living Humanae Vitae: stories of faithfulness to the Church’s teachings on sex and marriage

May 1, 2018

How many times can she write about NFP?

I can write about it as many times as it takes in order for me to internalize the seemingly simple concepts undergirding this most perennially misunderstood of Catholic teachings: openness to life.

I’ve spilled plenty of digital ink on the splendors of HV in the past, and I don’t retract a single character of any of it, but boy, living it out day-to-day is a little different than studying it in abstraction.

I just finished reading a trilogy of stories set in ancient Rome, around 70 years AD, and the grit and virtue and boldness of the early Christians whose lives it chronicled astonishes me. Not only because of the certain death in the arena at the jaws of wild beasts which they faced if their clandestine faith was exposed, but because they were truly – at least in the fictional narrative I read- in constant conversation with one another and with God about His will.

It reminded me a little bit (and only a little bit) of practicing NFP. The willingness to look foolish, to feel foolish, and to be subject to some degree of rejection – varying from bemused to downright nasty – by the culture at large. This comparison both consoles and shames me, because on the one hand I probably don’t need to worry overly much about imprisonment and martyrdom in 21st century America (not at this precise moment, at least) and on the other hand, how embarrassing that the relatively benign cross I’ve been asked to shoulder feels so crushing upon my feeble shoulders.

Because for all the beauty and truth and goodness I perceive in the Church’s teachings on sex and marriage, living it out is often none of the above. I don’t want to spend the next 12 to 14 months “getting my body back” only to balloon to an unspeakable number on the scale again with another pregnancy. I don’t want to practice copious amounts of abstinence within marriage, feeling more like a roommate than a spouse while I learn the ropes of (yet) another method of NFP. I don’t want to peer anxiously into the mists of my 40’s and wonder if I’m going to be one of those lucky women who keep ovulating well into their 5th decade, thereby prolonging the suspense and surprise of another baby in the very twilight of my fertile years.

I don’t have the faith of Sarah and Abraham. I don’t have the confident humility of Mary. I lack Elizabeth’s joyful surrender. I spend a lot of time worrying about all of this, to be perfectly honest, and for the first time in my life, I can wholeheartedly empathize with the temptation of contraception.

But.

(It’s a big but.)

God knows my heart better. God knows our needs better than we do. And God asks so relatively little of us modern Christians in the developed world. My children have food and medicine and beds to sleep in. There is no conflict in our region that daily imperils their lives. We have medical care to bring them all, almost certainly, to adulthood, a reality unthinkable only a few generations past. We are richly, richly blessed. My life is not without its challenges, but should I come face to face with a Christian mother from the ancient world, I don’t think she would recognize my suffering as such. Maybe she would look around at the vast temptation all our technology affords us to ignore God – to become like gods in a real sense – and she would nod her head in understanding at the real difficulties this presents in raising a faithful family. But I think she would probably also look at our overflowing closets and dishwasher and running water and marvel at the sheer wealth and provision we tend to take for granted.

And I wonder if she would look at me with my access to a clean, safe hospital (and epidurals!) and good maternal healthcare and a supportive, faithful husband and no known health issues and steady employment and wonder why I was so afraid of bringing new life into the world.

I wonder that, too.

Is it because I’ve been conditioned to not overdo things in the gestational department by a culture that hammers us over the head with the message that two is plenty? Is it because I have unrealistic beauty standards for myself based largely upon the availability and use of contraception? Is it because we have little to no daily support outside our extended family (which alone is an enormous advantage) as we parent these children of ours, the village having since passed into the realm of history and metaphor?

All I know is that we had 5 babies in 7 years, and I’m tired. I want my body back. I want to sleep through the night again. I want to eagerly count down the months until all 5 kids are in school full time and my professional life can ramp up again during those 35 available hours a week.

Basically, I want motherhood and child rearing to have been a fleeting season that flies by (as I am repeatedly told by strangers at Target) and is gone in the wistful blink of an eye, but I also want to reject the cultural narrative that my children are somehow holding me back and that my fertility is something to be tightly managed, suppressed, and ultimately discarded.

I want it both ways.

I want to live in harmony with the culture of which I am a part while also raising children who transcend the culture to seek the Lord’s will over their own. I want to be confident in our choice to live faithfully the Church’s call to marital chastity and fruitfulness and also look great in jeans and effortlessly drop the pounds that pregnancy hangs on my diminutive frame. I want to fill my home with happy children and also be handed the keys to a Nissan NV with a wink and a smile from a God who, as it turns out, subscribes to the health and wealth gospel Himself, despite what the actual Gospels say, and will surely reward my faithfulness with material abundance and children who sleep through the night from birth.

I want a lot of contradictory things.

And my greatest discomfort lies in that friction between what I claim to want as a subject of Christ and what I pant enviously after as a citizen of the world.

I have some stories to share with you from friends and fellow Christians in the coming weeks as we approach the 50th anniversary of Bl. Paul VI’s prophetic text, Humanae Vitae, in July. They are stories of suffering and heartache. Stories of loss and betrayal. Stories of hope, of fidelity, and of a peace that surpasses understanding. They are the stories of ordinary men and women who are using NFP and struggling, failing, confessing, and getting back up again to keep at it because the struggle is worth it. Because the Church asks us to do this thing in Her wisdom, not in Her sadism. Because either we trust in the Apostolic authority handed down from Peter or we are each our own little magisterium and, as such, are tasked with an exhaustive and impossible list of things to discern for ourselves using the quivering compass of our own consciences.

The Church asks us to do much harder things than what Humanae Vitae contains. We worship the Creator of the Universe contained in a scrap of bread. We proclaim the Resurrection of the dead and immortality. We turn our cheek to let an enemy get a better angle for the second punch. And yes, we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice even in the bedroom, which is the very last place our culture encourages us to exercise any sort of restraint or charity.

It’s a wild ride. It’s an impossible mandate without Jesus. And it is going to the stuff that 21st century saints are made of, I’m firmly convinced.

I think after reading some of the stories I’ll be sharing over the next 2 months, you’ll think so, too. We hear plenty of stories of people who find the demands of Christ impossibly high and, like the rich young man in the Gospel, walk away.

But sticking with it when the going gets tough? Relying on the unfathomable depths of Jesus’ mercy when we inevitably stumble and fall?

Now those are some stories worth telling.

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