Being Open to God’s Plan
By Teri Dean
I first wrote about our Natural Family Planning (NFP) journey for The Modern Saint back in 2003 when Fr Terry was our pastor. When I was asked if I could write a testimony again, I thought it might provide an interesting perspective more than 20 years later. We are in a phase of our life that many couples actively practicing NFP can only imagine as “a long time from now in a galaxy far, far away”.
We were blessed to be introduced to NFP in our marriage prep classes. We completed 3 of the 4 classes before our wedding and found it easy to understand and a true blessing to our marriage. We enjoyed several years of child-free activities before we felt God calling us to parenthood, and NFP was just as effective at accomplishing pregnancy as it had been delaying it. After 4 healthy, uncomplicated births, my head said we were done, especially as I was SO tired of hearing people react to our growing family by saying, “Don’t you know what causes that?” YES, we knew EXACTLY what caused that, but God wasn’t done with our family yet, and as we sat in His quiet presence, we heard Him calling us to be parents again.
We were blessed with two more healthy children, even after the age of 40. Not one of them was a “surprise” or an “oops”. I look at the youngest two and think how incomplete our family would have been if we looked anywhere but to God for our family plan.
We had a skeleton of a financial plan in place for a family of eight, yet every time things were getting a bit thin, especially during a period of prolonged job loss, I was always amazed when something unexpected but very helpful appeared to fill the gap, including a “bridge” job until the economy improved and help finding scholarships and financial aid to help pay the kids’ fees.
Not that life hasn’t come without challenges. Thankfully our children have all been healthy, but both my husband and I faced cancer diagnoses in our late forties. I don’t think that’s ever easy to hear, but it’s especially scary when you imagine leaving your children prematurely at such a young age, our youngest was 3 and the oldest just 16. Surely this couldn’t have been God’s plan? Through both our cancer journeys, God continued to put wonderful medical resources in our lives, and such support from our parish and school communities that the kids never missed a beat. Being face-to-face with cancer taught us empathy and even inspired some career choices, and we were reminded not to take our health for granted even in the midst of busy lives.
Yes, day-to-day life was crazy. Now that we are both retired, I do sometimes look back and wonder how we got everyone where they needed to go, with the correct clothing and homework, at least most of the time, but our children learned to be flexible, to look out for each other, to care for others, and to trust in prayer to Our God. They have also learned to give back to others, and we’ve been able to establish a high school scholarship to help large families fund education needs. As they have grown to adults, and married and started their own families, I see the blessings God continues to share with us. The kids still want to vacation together, and they hang out together even without us parents around.
Some people deride NFP, thinking it doesn’t work, and indeed, you could look at our larger family and conclude it must not have worked, since we ended up with so many kids. What I now appreciate is that people who are open to NFP are also those with humility who are open to God’s plan. I can’t imagine deciding that our plan is better than God’s plan, because I could never have imagined how beautiful His plan for us would be!