This is a guest post by a new friend of mine named Jeff Hite. One of the things I like to do with my blog is occasionally showcase what other people’s spiritual journeys look like. I don’t have to agree with them, ’cause hey, this isn’t an echo chamber, I just need to find them interesting.

Jeff is Catholic and he and his wife follow something called Natural Family Planning. That’s a small part of what this essay is about, but not really, as you’ll see. It’s particularly interesting to me because it reveals one couple’s answer to a problem I’ve been having in my own marriage. Communication. So without further ado, here’s Jeff:

What is left after the Crash or How Natural Family planning and charting saved our marriage, by Jeff Hite

Hello My Name is Jeff I wanted to talk to you about a topic that is not always very popular, but very important. First I want to make it clear from the beginning that the Catholic Church does not say that you have to have as many children as you can or even that you have as many as we do, we have 8 by the way. That belief is a Monty Python type parody of our beliefs. What the Catholic Church says is that you should always be open to life when you look at your life as a married couple. That is why natural family planning works. That is why when you talk to couples that truly practice this method of family planning they will tend to have more than the average 1.25 kids per family. But it certainly does not mean that you have to have a big family.

The story I am going to share with you is one that my wife and I normally tell as a couple, to people when we are explaining why natural family planning is important. It is a true story and so it may not have the flash and bang that you would get if we made this up but it is a good story. This is really not a story about how Natural Family Planing works or even why it works although there is some of that in here, instead it is a tale about how one couple got lost, and found each other again because they opened their hearts to God and through that to life.

A long time ago, in a kingdom far far away…. No really Ann and I meet in southern Germany in the former Kingdom of Bavaria when we were in still in high school, and for me it was love at first sight. Don’t worry this is not going to turn into a long love story. The truth is that I knew the first time we met that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this woman. It was just one of those things that you know about someone when you meet them for the first time. But the point is that I knew that I would go to the ends of the earth for her. So the question is, how did we go from this loving couple to a few years after we were married barely speaking to each other, and Ann telling me that there was really something wrong.

The answer is not simple. There were a number of things wrong: too much time apart, not enough money, little or no support from family, an unsupportive husband.

In truth what had happened was we had lost sight of what marriage is supposed to be about. In all honesty, I don’t think that we ever really knew. You know that passion that you see in the movies? People rushing home after dinner and ripping each others clothes off? We had felt that way about each other and thought that was it. That was all there would be. We had truly lost sight of God in our relationship.

I do think that our love truly was deeper than that, after all we had managed to weather living apart for a number years and had developed a pretty strong friendship, but we were not looking any deeper, and certainly not living any deeper than that. I think our friendship in the end was what allowed us to stay together long enough to fix things…

We tried talking with our priest, and a counselor but it didn’t really work for us. We were both committed to changing things but we really didn’t know how. Ann suggested talking to a natural family planning couple. At that point I didn’t see anything wrong with the way we were doing things, but I was desperate and willing to try anything. I knew that contraception was against Church teaching but I didn’t know why, and really didn’t see anything wrong with it.

So we registered for NFP classes and the first meeting was rather awkward. To say there was a generation gap would be putting it mildly. We left that meeting feeling a bit confused. But, we took the materials home and looked over the program on our own and decided to give it a try. At this point I was willing to try anything. I know I keep saying that but, I don’t know how else to express how desperate I was to find something that really helped us heal. Things were starting to get better between us, if for no other reason than that we were both trying to make them better. But most of the things we were doing were very superficial.

What happened next was the thing that probably saved us. I am not going to say that I handed Ann the thermometer in the morning and our marriage was healed. That was really not the case. For one thing she was not going to get up at 5 a.m. with me to take her temperature. But what we did do was talk about the charting every day. It forced us to do the one thing we had stopped doing. We had stopped talking to each other about anything, and it forced us to do it every day. That led to talking about other things that were important to us, and that was what in the end saved us. By talking every day about something as important and intimate as the way your bodies worked, it gave us an opportunity to open up to each other. Which led to open and honest discussions about marriage. We had to do somethings that we were not used to doing like waiting, and not just do whatever we wanted, and so we spent time talking, and doing some things together. We even took dance lessons. No I am no better at it then I was when we started, and if you are out there sir, I still can’t hear the beat.

I don’t want you to think that we started using NFP and we were healed of all ills. We were not. We still have problems, but even during our roughest times we can talk about the charting everyday and it gives us something to share. It gives us a starting point.

The other important thing that came from this was that we learned some very important things about life, being open to it, and understanding what we had been doing by contracepting and holding ourselves back from one another. We were denying God His role in our lives and our marriage. Soon after we opened our hearts to this thinking, we felt a call to teach NFP so we could share the love we found with other people.

The teaching certification process showed us we were not alone. We found other couples who shared our beliefs. We started seeking out and finding priests and other clergy that were really supportive of the NFP lifestyle. And when finding those that were not supportive, we let them know they should be. It became like a crusade for us. And in the end it helped to draw us together.

We are no longer quite as zealous as we once were in sharing our beliefs. The wacky zealots often get tuned out and written off as nuts. Instead we have decided to focus on trying to share what we know with just one person or family at a time. Or one class at a time. Our hope now is that we will plant a few seeds here and there and that when folks are ready to embrace the truth, they will know where to start looking. Balancing the demands of our growing family and other obligations limits our outside commitments. This is one commitment we have decided is worth our time right now because of the changes we have seen in several friends who have come to share our beliefs. We hope that those of you hearing our words today will one day see the joy we do in living an NFP lifestyle.

If you would like more information about Natural Family Planning, please contact your local Couple to Couple League International teaching couple. You can find out more about Natural Family Planning or the organization that we belong to by going out to http://CCLI.org. There are classes going on almost all the time.

Thanks Jeff. I appreciate your openness. Those of you reading this should also check out Jeff’s podcast Great Hites and follow him on Twitter. He’s a good guy.