by Erin Franco at Humble Handmaid
I used to hate NFP.
I hated waking up to take my temperature every morning. Later, the rainbow of special stickers to keep track of, and having to fold the toilet paper every single time into those neat, flat layers of tissue. The charts that became such a heavy weight on my shoulders. Feeling like a gatekeeper for intimacy. The fact that “green light” days were the very days I felt least like being close to my husband. The arguing and resentment and hurting one another over and over. The feeling that I had to be doing something wrong if it was this hard. I hated feeling lied to because our NFP teachers told us that every month was going to be “like a little honeymoon.”
I hated the nagging disenchantment.
It has taken me years to see some of those much-heralded fruits of NFP in my marriage.
It has taken me years to realize that NFP is not the cross.
When I have been half-drowning in real crosses in my life that made us discern the need to use NFP for a while, I added NFP to the list. But NFP is not the cross.
When we have been deep in the trenches with NFP, both of us struggling with our own faults and weaknesses, I added NFP to my list of crosses. But NFP is not the cross. [Continue Reading…]
