By Shane and Brenda Goettle
Special to the Herald
(From the issue of 2/12/04)

Many decisions faced us during our engagement. The biggest went beyond our wedding. This decision was to use Natural Family Planning (NFP/fertility awareness) both to plan and to postpone pregnancies during our marriage.

Brenda: The decision did not come lightly. We had serious reasons to postpone parenthood. I knew that the Catholic Church was opposed to contraception and that was important to me. I also had a friend who went on the pill. She started experiencing nausea. I learned the side effects could get much worse - moodiness, weight gain, stroke (even death). I knew I would feel resentful if I experienced such side effects. That didn’t seem like a good way to start a marriage. So I researched NFP. I was happy to find that the sympto-thermal method of NFP was scientifically based, healthy, and 99% effective in identifying a woman’s fertile time.

We took NFP classes with the Couple to Couple League and soon developed confidence in fertility awareness. In fact, we used NFP to postpone a pregnancy for a year and a half. Then we desired to start a family. When we conceived the first time that we engaged in marital relations during the fertile time, we knew that NFP had been effective BOTH to achieve and prevent pregnancy.

For 12 years now, the use of NFP has had an effect on our marriage that goes beyond the spacing of children. We treat the marital act as a renewal of our covenant of marriage. In each and every act we say with the language of our bodies, "I take you for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." We give to each other totally, without reservation—no alterations to the design of our bodies or the marital act.

Shane: The abstinence during Brenda’s fertile time has not always been easy, but it has given us opportunities to work on those values that every marriage needs: self-control, selflessness, patience, kindness, etc. We accept each other as we are–including our fertility. Neither of us feels used or taken for granted. We convert our times of abstinence into opportunities for romance – to give and receive affection in ways that maintain the experience of "courtship." Our use of NFP (fertility awareness) requires us to talk about our sexual relationship. This in turn has made communication about important issues in our lives a habit--a habit that permeates all aspects of our marriage. We are more in tune with each other’s emotions and feelings because of this communication.

NFP has helped our marriage to grow and it has helped us individually to become more mature in our faith and in our relationship with each other. Most importantly, we have a real sense we are living out God’s own plan for married life.