By Carrie Kinnison
St. Maximilian Kolbe wrote that human life has three stages: preparing to work, work, and suffering for love. How many of us who have embraced NFP can relate? When a couple makes a commitment to NFP, they echo Mary’s fiat, and enter into the theodrama—that epic story of love that God is writing for us all. And how often that story looks so different from the egodrama—the story we have planned for ourselves!
As my favorite coffee mug reminds me: the days are long, but the years are short. The last five years I have spent soaking up the minutes, hours, and days with our four children have convinced me that this is so true. And yet, there was a time when I did not think I “wanted” to have children. Wouldn’t they be a burden, I wondered. I thought they would surely interfere with my career—that “work” that I had chosen for myself—not to mention my free time.
At that time, I was four years from converting to the Catholic Church. Following a difficult and sometimes unstable childhood, during my teens and early 20s, I looked to achievement, social accolades, and attention from men to feel whole. As a baptized Christian, my soul carried a seed of our faith, but in my early 20s I became enamored with other world religions that seemed more steeped in history and tradition than did my lukewarm Methodist faith. I studied cultural anthropology, traveled to Asia several times and studied Buddhism—all in pursuit of something true. Something good. Something beautiful.
But as He does will us all, God used this past to put me on the path that would lead me to meeting my now husband, Charlie. A man who, while raised Catholic himself, found his faith reignited as I completed my RCIA journey and entered the church in 2014.
Initially, we chose NFP because it is what we were told to do in our marriage preparation class in 2015. Being a perpetual rule-follower, I committed to living this practice—as soon as we were married. For most of our engagement we were living together and sleeping together. We simply did not know any differently.
But after some time, this weight of departure from Church teaching grew heavier to bear, and with six months left before our wedding we decided to refrain from the marital embrace until we were actually married.
This time, we felt a call beyond simply “following the rules.” As we journeyed closer to marriage, it became clear that a marriage that was free, total, faithful, and fruitful was water to our thirsty souls that longed for security, trust and peace. It was important for us that we would be able to trust each other during the times when abstinence would be required—after the birth of a baby, when one of us was out of town, or if one of us fell ill.
The “practice round” that periods of NFP abstinence provide was such a comfort to me in our culture of constant sexualization and infidelity—especially given my unmoored adolescence. In the months of abstinence leading up to our wedding, we steadily built a solid foundation of trust and emotional and spiritual intimacy that a focus on physical intimacy so often eclipse in young couples.
In my early twenties, I did not know that the beauty I was looking for would look a lot like suffering for love, a lot like pain, discomfort, inconvenience, and overwhelm. A younger me ran from these—seeking freedom, maybe even license—to follow my own desires and accomplish the work I wanted to do in the world.
If you gave me a nickel for every time someone’s stopped me to tell me my “hands are full”, I could probably buy a yacht by now. There are days when the noise never ends, my nerves are shot, and I want to hide in a closet. I may raise my voice more than I want to or feel the selfish desire to flee—to once again have the time and space to do what I want to do. But where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. The graces of the sacrament of marriage more than make up for our weaknesses as we face the trials of being open to life.
After six years of marriage, four sweet children here with us on Earth and one in Heaven, I can begin to see the story God was writing for us all along. Taking our mustard seed of faith, He drew us gently closer to Him until we found our place in His majestic story. The story of His people who suffer for love and redeem the world.
Carrie Kinnison is an adult convert to Catholicism. She lives with her husband Charlie and four children Nora (5), Noah (4), Isaiah (2) and Emma (4 months) in Florissant. They attend Incarnate Word Parish in Chesterfield and are part of the thriving hybrid-homeschool community of St. John Paul II Preparatory School. In her “free” time, Carrie uses her skills from her professional background in music education working part time for an educational publishing company and helping Charlie run their choral music business. She enjoys baking, reading, traveling, and practicing liturgical living.