After Becca's wonderful post in January, I've been meaning to write a companion post. I wanted to speak to my perspective in this long journey from our marriage prep through our experience with NaPro Technology. But, as always, you get busy with other things. I've been busy preparing the house for another person.
Our marriage prep sessions with Fr. Andrew really set me on a firm path as to my role and duties as a husband, and later a father. I realized after everything we learned, that I had a pretty basic, narrow-minded view of marriage. Not bad, just simple. But marriage and parenting's role in society, culture, and the world has vastly much more meaning than I first thought.
With this new found knowledge, and vocation that gave me more purpose than all of the college courses I ever could have taken, we entered into our vocation giving ourselves entirely to the other. We both remember that day very vividly. Well, the ceremony anyway; the reception seemed to rush by! But we remember so much detail of the nuptial mass, it could only have been a grace from God that enabled us to see and remember so clearly. (Plus, pre-wedding, in the foyer, I believe I had a visit from my guardian angel, but more on that story later.)
So we began this new chapter in our lives, and it was wonderful. I was finishing college at the time, and I had all the support and encouragement I could ever need. Becca gives everything she has in taking care of me, and I try my best to do the same. So after graduation, a real honeymoon, and a few months we were ready to start trying for a baby. We understood that the need to be financially ready wasn't as important as having our hearts ready.
We had been practicing a method of NFP, the sympto-thermal method, since before we got married at the recommendation of Fr. Andrew. So we took those courses, and began the charting with Becca. And when that time came to start trying, we began to use those days of fertility as we learned. After some time, we knew something must be off, because no baby was coming about. And every month, she was having such intense pains, that she would be practically bed-ridden for a day or two. I suffered with her, in my helplessness to ease her pain. It was a very trying time for me mentally, not being able to offer a viable solution which is something I'm usually good at.
So as Providence would have it, we were visiting down south in St. James with some friends, who happen to be priests. Fr. Andrew, who did our marriage prep and the marriage part of the wedding. My good friend Fr. Chris, who celebrated the mass at our wedding. And Fr. Paul, who was invited to the wedding, but ended up concelebrating with the rest of them (there was a fourth priest concelebrating as well, but he wasn't at this particular dinner). So we got to have a good visit with them, and sometime during dinner Fr. Andrew brought up the question of when we were going to start having kids. And we explained we had been using the NFP method since his recommendation back when, but nothing seemed to be happening. Then he tells us about a couple he was counseling, and they were going to see a doctor that specialized in something called NaPro Technology. He didn't know much about it at the time, but remembered the doctor's name in Baton Rouge and gave it to us.
Later that evening, before departures, we were prayed over by each priest in the little chapel in the rectory. I felt as though we had been commissioned for a holy task, and we had a new path to try our feet on.
So, not long thereafter we met with the doctor in Baton Rouge who explained what NaPro's goals were. They seek to diagnose and restore a woman's body and health to it's normal levels and functions, so that procreation can happen naturally. I realized how much sense this made when I heard it, and wondered how so many things out there have gotten so far off track and in most cases, totally remove the procreative and unitive act between a husband and wife. It seems as though those other things had forgotten about the woman, and focused solely on 'getting a baby'. During our first meeting, he explained that he preferred all of his patients to chart using the Creighton Model of NFP, and we would have to go to special classes to learn this method.
All the while, we were preparing ourselves to possibly bear the cross of being incapable of having our own biological children. So we began to explore adoption, gathering information and meeting with a local agency to get better acquainted with it.
End of Part 1...
Our marriage prep sessions with Fr. Andrew really set me on a firm path as to my role and duties as a husband, and later a father. I realized after everything we learned, that I had a pretty basic, narrow-minded view of marriage. Not bad, just simple. But marriage and parenting's role in society, culture, and the world has vastly much more meaning than I first thought.
With this new found knowledge, and vocation that gave me more purpose than all of the college courses I ever could have taken, we entered into our vocation giving ourselves entirely to the other. We both remember that day very vividly. Well, the ceremony anyway; the reception seemed to rush by! But we remember so much detail of the nuptial mass, it could only have been a grace from God that enabled us to see and remember so clearly. (Plus, pre-wedding, in the foyer, I believe I had a visit from my guardian angel, but more on that story later.)
So we began this new chapter in our lives, and it was wonderful. I was finishing college at the time, and I had all the support and encouragement I could ever need. Becca gives everything she has in taking care of me, and I try my best to do the same. So after graduation, a real honeymoon, and a few months we were ready to start trying for a baby. We understood that the need to be financially ready wasn't as important as having our hearts ready.
We had been practicing a method of NFP, the sympto-thermal method, since before we got married at the recommendation of Fr. Andrew. So we took those courses, and began the charting with Becca. And when that time came to start trying, we began to use those days of fertility as we learned. After some time, we knew something must be off, because no baby was coming about. And every month, she was having such intense pains, that she would be practically bed-ridden for a day or two. I suffered with her, in my helplessness to ease her pain. It was a very trying time for me mentally, not being able to offer a viable solution which is something I'm usually good at.
So as Providence would have it, we were visiting down south in St. James with some friends, who happen to be priests. Fr. Andrew, who did our marriage prep and the marriage part of the wedding. My good friend Fr. Chris, who celebrated the mass at our wedding. And Fr. Paul, who was invited to the wedding, but ended up concelebrating with the rest of them (there was a fourth priest concelebrating as well, but he wasn't at this particular dinner). So we got to have a good visit with them, and sometime during dinner Fr. Andrew brought up the question of when we were going to start having kids. And we explained we had been using the NFP method since his recommendation back when, but nothing seemed to be happening. Then he tells us about a couple he was counseling, and they were going to see a doctor that specialized in something called NaPro Technology. He didn't know much about it at the time, but remembered the doctor's name in Baton Rouge and gave it to us.
Later that evening, before departures, we were prayed over by each priest in the little chapel in the rectory. I felt as though we had been commissioned for a holy task, and we had a new path to try our feet on.
So, not long thereafter we met with the doctor in Baton Rouge who explained what NaPro's goals were. They seek to diagnose and restore a woman's body and health to it's normal levels and functions, so that procreation can happen naturally. I realized how much sense this made when I heard it, and wondered how so many things out there have gotten so far off track and in most cases, totally remove the procreative and unitive act between a husband and wife. It seems as though those other things had forgotten about the woman, and focused solely on 'getting a baby'. During our first meeting, he explained that he preferred all of his patients to chart using the Creighton Model of NFP, and we would have to go to special classes to learn this method.
All the while, we were preparing ourselves to possibly bear the cross of being incapable of having our own biological children. So we began to explore adoption, gathering information and meeting with a local agency to get better acquainted with it.
End of Part 1...
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