Several years ago our church sponsored Fr. McCaffrey who specializes in Natural Family Planning or NFP.

He spoke to our congregation and said that 80% of the Catholics sitting in the pews weekly, and receiving the Holy Eucharist, were either using contraceptives or were sterilized.

We were part of that 80%. It hit us like a ton of bricks. We had justified our decision to use sterilization. We had four children. The world tells you "This is enough".

God started showing me through education that our decision to sterilize was wrong. He also showed me that most contraceptives were NOT preventing pregnancy, but if it occurred it would abort. The word they use is "abortifacia". It makes me ill to think that I did this unknowingly. I have always been against abortion and had I known, maybe I would have looked to God for an answer sooner. I am so thankful that God showed me that I had been deceived. Have any of you felt this way?

We had taken God's will for our lives into our hands. So where do we go from here? We must confess our sin. He went on to say that if there was any way for us to reverse this sin, that the blessings would be endless.

We went home and prayed about it. It was hard to think about spending money to reverse this. We felt our family was complete. I was 41 and was somewhat fearful of having a special needs child or twins or triples…..but God gave me peace. Our friends and family thought we were crazy to even think about this. Believe us there was pressure.

We spoke to our doctor about this and he referred us to a specialist. He told us there wasn't any guarantee that this would work if we were trying to achieve a pregnancy. We told him that we felt that we had taken away God's control in our lives and that we wanted to give it back. If we had another child it was His will. If not, we were very happy with our family. We wanted to be able to stand before Him when this life is over and have Him say, "Well done, good and faithful child". It was about total surrender!

It felt so good!

Five months after the reversal, I was pregnant! The doctor had said IF it worked, it would take at least a year. I guess God knew my time clock was ticking. We now have Monica. She is healthy and normal in every way. Our other children love her and think she is so cute. So do most people who thought we were crazy.

Then we were faced with the decision of "What do we do now?" The answer was NFP! Father McCaffrey was right. The blessings are endless when you surrender your life to Christ.

God showed us that we had been deceived into thinking that we could use birth control, which is what we did before and we feel lead us to sterilization.

We found that using NFP has given us the balance that we desired by giving control to God and giving us the choice of using our self control to grow closer to each other and to Christ.

Fr. Dan told me that there are pamphlets in the back of the church for more information.

Thank you for letting us share our testimony. I pray that you ask God to help you grow closer to Him. What is His plan for your life? He is the Master Planner and His plan is out of this world.

Doug and Sharon Hale

Nebraska City, NE

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