I first heard about NFP when
I was in my first year in university. In Legion of Mary meetings, my seniors
often shared about how they explained to their friends about the Church stand
on abortion, and sometimes it's easier to explain why abortion is wrong than
why contraceptive is wrong. I also used to wonder whether it is truly possible
for a married couple to not use artificial contraceptive.
I think there was a point of
time when I bumped into this blog through my friend. Since then, I started to
enjoy blogwalking these mommies' blog. I learned a lot about the true meaning of marriage, of sacrifice, and the beauty of the crosses in various forms in family life. I also slowly get to know married couples
who do practice NFP in the real life.
I think these couples really
impress me. The thing is the more I read and pray about these issues, the more
I realize that NFP is not something that can be prescribed easily like a pill. It is
under the big umbrella of understanding what marriage is and how to deepen our spiritual life.
Therefore, as next year I
will 'hit' the age of 25, there is more sense of urgency in me to challenge my
friends and create a sense of urgency in them. Those who are engaged are busy
preparing their logistics and decorations. With one off explanation
(3-days-2-nite experience in Engagement Encounter), I have met quite a large
proportion of friends who only heard about the church teaching on artificial
contraceptive for the first time during the session. Some think that not
using artificial contraceptive is 'impossible', or 'by right,the church says
...but I think it’s impossible to practice NFP.’
Honestly...I think all good
habits are difficult to pick up. It's very hard to say that "God has a
plan" if we are not used to finding out God's plan in every moment. We
think that Sunday Mass + 10minutes prayer before going to bed is all that we
need. We are poisoned by the idea of ownership of our body is equal to 'I can do whatever I want'. We grow up thinking that it's so 'natural' that after we are married, we can do 'whatever we want'. From my observation, that it seems that only a small percentage of dating or engaged
couples truly understand up and down, in and out, about the implication of
saying that marriage is a vocation (and I’m very grateful that there are still
small percentage of people who do understand about this).
Nevertheless, I do believe
that God has his own time. Even though I feel sad that quite a lot of friends
entering marriage with the thought that ‘as long as I get the certificate of
completion of Engagement Encounter or Marriage Preparation Course à I’m ready to get married’, I
believe that it’s never too late to grow deeper in understanding of God’s plan
in marriage. For many people, it’s through the children God converts the
parents. As I’m trying to put myself in their shoes, I can’t deny that the
pressure to have a big banquet in this region is really high, that as much as
the young (and without-much-money *duhh,
raise my hand up!*) couples have a good intention to prepare a marriage, not
only a wedding, there’s a real challenge in struggling to please parents and
big families and save money for the house (that won’t even be ready in 3 years,
in Singapore case!), that it’s really hard to focus on the marriage
preparation.
Anyway, back to the title, I
think we, as young and not-married-yet ladies, have lots and lots of homework
to do. Isn’t it so natural for us to talk about relationships and families? The
challenge now is to bring up the supernatural aspect of these natural topics
for us in our conversations. It’s never too early to know about the beauty of
our vocation and to ask our priests or friends that can be trusted if we are
not sure.
