7 Habits in the iGeneration

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Do you ever consider the legacy you are leaving? I admit, I do. Probably, I think about it too much. I think that's a longterm effect of cancer survival (we're never sure when the cancer caused by the chemo is going to pop up) and I think it's related to having baby girls after 40. When they are my age, what will they know of me? What can I leave for them that will encourage them when I am not able to do that? It might be a middle-age thing to think about legacy.

Honestly, though, I've been thinking it since I was 24. Cancer thing, definitely. Shortly before I was diagnosed, an influential book hit the bestseller's list. Stephen Covey was writing compellingly about living intentionally and leaving a meaningful legacy. I was earnestly seeking father figures in my twenties and this guy fit the bill. 

Stephen Covey died a few weeks ago. I cried. I was surprised by my reaction, but it reminded me just how much he influenced me way back when. I took the book from the shelf, dusted it off, and wrote about it here.

Answering Questions: Dads Who Work Hard. Really hard.

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I'm trying to answer some questions from the last few weeks. In this post, Greg from USA Today said:

I have read nearly all of your backposts and I just have a couple of questions:

1) How did you do it with your husband seemingly never at home to help?

2) Do you regret the decision to have him work 2 jobs at the same time?

Dear Greg,

1. We struggled through together, each granting the other grace. (Note, sometimes we failed miserably in this area, but we tried. We still try. And we're getting better at it as we get older.)  I really do believe that the biggest help is attitude. I never allow myself for a moment to think that I'm a single parent. That's self-defeating for me: If I think that way, I fail to see how blessed I am to have emotional support of a loving husband, to have financial support, to have reunions and homecomings and late night phone calls. Single moms have none of those things. I don't live with the pain of divorce or death. I live knowing that I am loved by an amazingly wonderful man.  I don't mean to candy-coat it. It was--and is--hard. Really hard. Especially with teenagers and toddlers together. But I'm not a single mom. Not by a longshot.

And it's downright insulting to him to consider myself as a single mom. He's working for US. That's the point. His job doesn't serve him; it serves our family. I wrote about that here: An Active Love.

Also, when we were younger, Mike's father was younger. Actually, he was older as fathers go. I remind myself that he was the same age when I was born as I was when Sarah was born. 42. That means that he was retirement age when our firstborn was born. And retire he did. For the first 20 years of our marriage, he was readily available to help me any way he could and he filled in a lot of those dad places--repairs, carpools, even vacuuming when I was pregnant. Repairs. Did I mention repairs? He's been unable to do those things in the past five years or so and I have felt his absence keenly. In many ways, he was the wind beneath my wings and I will always be grateful for his generous help.

Some women find that support in a military community of wives. Others find it in their mothers, mothers-in-law, or sisters. And some have truly super great local friends. I think it's pretty much impossible to do it without some adult support. I remember years ago, when Stephen was a baby. His doctor and I spent a long week together when my newborn was admitted at 2-weeks-old. The doctor had just joined the practice and his family was really young. He asked me what he could do to make his hours easier on his wife. I didn't hesitate to tell him to get her a cleaning lady. He was so surprised! But it was the first thing that came to my mind. Those early years are so physically intense. Another adult to bear those burdens, even a little bit, is a huge help. I used to wish that someone would offer to just come hold and walk with the baby for a half hour so I could fold laundry. That's such a simple--and desperate--wish. (Granddad could not bear fussy babies;-).

More often than not, there was no one. We muddled through--a crew of small children and me. Friends from the beginning drifted away as our family grew and we chose to homeschool; we just didn't have as much in common any more. Then we moved to a very new neighborhood with very few people and even fewer homeschoolers. And no Catholic homeschoolers at first. There was support in neighboring towns, but that involved driving and relinquishing naptime and sometimes, the tradeoff was more than I could bear. It was hard. And if there's a lesson in it for me--for us--it's to be on the lookout for people in my life right now who bear similar burdens. We can be a support to one another. We just have to be active about looking for ways to help and about reaching out and asking. All my asking was in my mind. I never spoke the words aloud to anyone but God. I should have.

Here are ten more essential tips for coping when dad's away.

2. Regret? I don't know. I don't really go there and neither does Mike. It was something we did together. Something that allowed us to live in this area, where all our extended family was when we made that decision. Something that allowed me to stay home. To homeschool. To write. He takes providing opportunities for his children very seriously and he saw building his career through both a "steady" job and freelance as the way to do it. He was right.  I trusted him then and I trust him now. I trust.

And so, no, I guess I don't regret. I don't think trust and regret can co-exist.

Now, I have a question for you, Greg. Did you strike up a conversation with Michael in the elevator at USA Today a few weeks ago? If so, thank you:-) He told me about it and I sort of thought he was just making it up because I was having one of those "I want to throw the computer out the window" kinds of days. You made me reconsider and saved my Macbook from certain doom;-).

Prayerful Sex

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This my second installation of NFP Throwback in honor of NFP Awareness Week. For the full introduction, please read here.

Without further ado, here's a column from Summer 1993. My current editorializing is in pink:

I recently asked a young man who is about to be married what advice he had received concerning marriage. He looked me straight in the eye and said, "The only advice my mother has given me is that no marriage can have too much of two things: sex and prayer." As I  recall, I turned very red and quickly inquired about china patterns. But the words have stuck with me. Now I wish I could sit with his mother and discover what other pearls of wisdom she has to offer. 

Because I know this young man, I know his mother was referring to unselfish marital sex. It is wholly appropriate to discuss lovemaking and prayer in the same context. That is how God intended it. Married love should embrace the Lord, creator of life. The unitive nature of making love and the procreative nature are inextricably intertwined. To deny either one is to deny God, who invested sex with that quality. In order to know God's will regarding the conception of children, the couple must pray together. It is that constant communication, with each other and with God that makes Natural Family Planning (NFP) so good for marriages.

In my last post, I shared the myriad of options the medical community makes available to couples who are planning their families. And we discovered what a euphemism "options" is. Rather than arbitrary, heavy-handed rules, the Church's stand on birth control is a protective measure, which shields couples from the evil inherent in all forms of artificial birth control and encourages them to consider God's will in every aspect of their lives.

NFP is not the rhythm method. It does not solely rely on a "safe time of the month." Instead, it is a scientific method in which married and engaged couples note, chart, and interpret the woman's fertility signs. The couple considers the time of the month, basal body temperature, cervical mucous, and physical attributes of the cervix itself. When used properly,it is every bit as effective as the pill.

It is not my intention to tell couples how to use NFP, but to tell them why NFP makes so much more sense than artificial birth control. Many couples decide on a form of contraception and then rarely discuss sex in terms of children. I wonder how many women, before they take their pills every morning, consider what God's plan is for their families. I wonder how many men ever think about the pill at all, even when their wives take it daily. Contraception becomes a routine part of day-today life-- a mechanization requiring little thought and no communication.

NFP enhances communciation between spouses. It is a shared responsibility. Most importantly, this cooperative effort embraces God. An NFP couple must not only discuss sex, but to use NFP properly, they must pray about it. It is a blessing to a marriage when God is included in the  sacred act He created. NFP requires prayerful consideration. It does seem that couples using NFP have more children than other couples. None of those children are "accidents." These couples have prayerfully considered life more often and are more open to divine intervention in the family planning. Above all, marriage partners who are open to God's plan know the peace of cooperation with the love of the Creator.

Marriage is hard work. I won't deny that NFP is work, too. I don't know of anything of value in interpersonal relationships that doesn't require some effort. NFP requires faithfulness. It requires some sacrifice, a dying to self. But that is what love is all about--giving for the good of another. That is not a bad thing. When they are choosing abstinence, couples experience a time of "courtship." They are challenged to find alternate expressions of love and they experiences the joys inherent to those expressions.

Finally, NFP is wonderful witness to children. When my children are adolescents and I want to impress upon them the merits of chastity, I will speak from a personal perspective, telling them about the sanctity of sex within a marriage, about sacrifice, and fidelity. I'll urge them to prayerfully consider God's will and His plan for their lives. Iwill be able to empathize with how difficult it is to deny the urgings of the flesh because I will be living a chaste life. [Note: Now that my children are of this age, I recognize the huge role a community of faith plays. When you are surrounded by supportive friends, this lifestyle is more readily embraced than when you are all alone in the culture. Whether married or single, living sexuality as God intended requires open communication and a shared of philosophy within the couple and, ideally, surrounding the couple. Cultivating that community is infinitely valuable.] I will tell them that I know what it feels like to be in love and to gratefully accept God's blessings upon a union. And when they are about to be married, I will tell them that a good marriage can never have too much of two things: sex and prayer.

NFP: 19 years later

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It's NFP Awareness week. This year, there's a bold, fresh website on the scene to take on the challenge of introducing Natural Family Planning to a new, decidedly digital generation. There's a great new collection of articles there that I'm sure will enlighten most everyone. And there's more: iusenfp.com is another new site--this one run by two young women--designed to promote the value of natural family planning. 

I heartily applaud the efforts of these young people (and I feel a bit like my grandmother calling them "these young people."). As I read them, I remember being young and married and not at all a part of the contraceptive culture. While I think these sites do run a calculated risk of sounding a bit like "The Natural Approach to Contraception," I think the good outweighs the potential for misinterpretation. They're definitely getting good information out there, information that is not readily available on the maintstream information superhighway. Over the years, I've grown to appreciate the spiritual aspects above all the rest. Openness to life is the ultimate self-improvement --God-improvement-- program. Hopefully, that, too, will come from these young writers.

My early NFP days predate said superhighway. I learned about NFP mostly from another young teacher who was also a newlywed at the first school where I taught. I had heard of it during an Engaged Encounter just before the school year began (we were married the first week of school), and Betsy followed up with her own experience. She was open and frank, but not nearly as frank as what's floating out there now. From there, I did some reading on my own and we took a Couple-to-Couple League class. 

We had decided on that Engaged Encounter not to contracept. And, frankly, we were pretty much open to whatever God had in mind. We welcomed our first baby just after our first anniversary. And I would do it exactly that way in heartbeat, if I had it to do again. It wasn't really until after that baby, and after cancer, that we started to understand the theology behind NFP. Our early marriage story is pretty different from most, but it's dear to us. 

Anyway, that's a rather longer introduction than I planned. All that to say, I figured that since I'm old enough to call the 1flesh.org folk "these young people," I should probably go back and dig up my own words before I share what I thought about NFP back in the beginning. I have three artcles from exactly 19 years ago today to share over the next three days. These were originally published in the Arlington Catholic Herald on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the very prophetic Humanae Vitae. I'm going to try to refrain from editorializing too much. The articles are just as I wrote them, with my comments today in pink.

Here we go:

There are table tents set up all around the waiting room of the OB/GYN office where I teach childbirth classes. "Ask about your birth control options," they scream from every corner of the room. Ask indeed. I wonder what I would be told.

Would I be told that the pill is an abortifacient? I don't think so. Rare is the doctor who sit down with a patient and discusses the fine print. Most couples know that the pill often prevents pregnancy by suppressing ovulation and altering the cervical mucus. But how many people understand the ultimate "back up"? When a baby is conceived, he is aborted without his mother's knowledge because hormones have rendered the uterus inhospitable to life. Some option! Before a woman could even consider her choices, the hormone in the pill she takes so routinely can abort her baby. All hormonal contraceptives work in a similar manner.

Norplant, new and trendy though it appears, is merely a steady stream of hormones for five years. A woman will never have to give birth control a second thought. But will she think about what those hormones are doing to the natural chemsitry of her body?  [Note: Norplant was discontinued in the United States about ten years after it was introduced. Hmmm]. 

Depo-Provera, a recently introduced injectable hormone contraception, provides up to three months protection against pregnancy, while remaining in the body and preventing the resumption of a normal cycle for up to eighteen month. Of course, once it has been injected the woman is stuck with it. Once they give her the shot, she can't take it out--for better or worse, no matter what the "side effects." ["Side effects" is a joke term. All efects of a drug are just that, effects. They may not be what you signed up for, but they are effects. Incidentally, Depo-Provera is Melinda Gates' drug of choice. You can read more on that here.]

Let's consider the side effects. "Side effects" are what the pharmaceutical companies call the unpleasant effects of drugs. They all listed in a rather lengthy insert included with every prescription of hormonal contraceptives. A woman may not experience every effect of the drug. But the list--which includes risk of blood clots, heart attack and strokes, gallbladder disease, liver tumors, headache, nervousness, depression and hair loss--is pretty scary reading material. Most couples never even glance at the insert. 

Then there are the other "options" which society and the medical community present to us. Another abortifacient, the IUD, works to prevent an embryo [a real live baby] from implanting in his mother's uterus. Instant abortion. Barrier methods, especially the condom which the popular press holds in such high esteem, prevent the very physical intimacy that lovemaking seeks and deny the unitive as well as the procreative nature of intercourse. And as far as spontaneity and romance go, I don't think it's spontaneous or romantic to go to bed with barriers between us.

When the couples in my classes ask me about birth control and I mention NFP, I amost always get the "you-must-be-an-extremist-hope-to-have-ten-kids" look [I was 27, with two children, when I wrote this. I am well aware that this line is amusing now. In a very, very good way.] I've often heard that the Catholic Church is unrealistic, rigid, and chauvinistic in its approach to contraception. I disagree.

When my husband and I really looked at the "options," when we took the time to educate ourselves about what was being professed by the secular society versus what the Church taught, we found that the Church was not only reasonable, but very supportive of marital sex. Far from being evil, in a Christian marriage, sex is a high and noble thing--a gift from God. The Church approves of lovemaking, even if for serious reasons the couple isn't trying to achieve pregnancy. The Church's stand on birth control seeks not to make life difficult by to help married couples make a good thing even better. Sex is holy; it is God's idea. And openness to children is an integral part of God's plan. 

Artificial birth control isn't good for women. And it isn't good for marriages. It deprives couples the third party in their union. God. When sex denies life, it denies Life. That is, it excludes the Creator of Life. once He is exclueded, one third of the mrriage covenant participants has been asked to leave--the wisest one. In my nex tpost, we'll consider Natural Family Planning, a way to plan families that embraces God.

[Am I a bad witness for NFP because I have nine children? I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I think there is a danger to think that good or successful use of NFP guarantees that your family makeup will look just like that of pharmaceutical family planners. If so, then clearly you have excellent scientific charting skills and applaudable self-control. I've even seen blogs where couples have practiced for years and never knew these few lines existed in the Church's teaching: With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.  

We learned quickly that we couldn't out-give God. His generosity--of adequate wealth, but more importantly of grace and strength--was sufficient. Always. For us, NFP was there, an underpinning of an awareness of fertility and hormonal cycles. Every one of those nine children was welcomed enthusiastically. We knew there would be challenges. And we trusted He would equip and bless. He always has.]