Trading in the Abstract

I've been sitting on this one for a bit as a ponder what, and how much to say.  My friend Sarah blogs at Catholic History Nerd and recently posted this wonderful bit about NFP.  I find myself torn in several directions, so I guess she will be getting more than one post here.

The first rabbit-hole that I will follow addresses a mistake I may have made here when I posted about how women want to know about fertility-awareness based methods (FABMs) of birth control.  I know I tend to wax idealistic about things because inside my head I trade in the abstract, not the concrete.  Sarah brings it down to the real:

Although I've been on board with NFP since I was a teenager, actually using it in my marriage has been a huge test of my faith. I had naively thought that obsessive charting would exempt me from those "lazy" user problems, but in reality the learning curve was steep. In our first months as newlyweds we dealt with much confusion, frustration, and loneliness. Had Theology of the Body cruelly duped us? 

Those FABMs that women wanted to learn?  They require no abstinence, but rather recommend the use of two barrier methods during the fertile window.  NFP demands what John Paul II calls in his Theology of the Body "periodic continence" -- abstinence during certain times.  And because we deal in the abstract, or because we are trying to sell NFP to an unconvinced crowd, we paint a rosy picture of its effects, while downplaying the very real sacrifice it requires.

Yet John Paul II draws deliberate parallel between the perpetual "continence for the kingdom" of religious vocations and the "periodic continence" of the married vocation: both require the sacrifice of a good of human sexuality for a greater good of divine love.  He acknowledges that sexual desire tends to a great good on the human level and points to an even greater good on the divine level.  Then he argues that the sacrifice of this great good and greater good 1) leads to something even greater-er and 2) is necessary for these goods to remain good.  (See the final chapter of his Man and Woman He Created Them if you'd like the citation for this.)

But it is a sacrifice, and sacrifice is by its nature hard.  It can lead to great joy, but it is hard. It is a bit disingenuous of us to promote this radical lifestyle change without admitting the challenge of it.  Who would claim that all the training to run a marathon is easy or all the schoolwork and research to get a PhD simple?  We shouldn't imply that living a true Christian marriage is easy but that it is worth it.

Sarah links to a book called The Sinner's Guide to Natural Family Planning, and I clicked the link to the free Amazon preview.  The author writes that "for some people, NFP is a genuine and significant cross."  I haven't read the book (though I am excited to) or been married long enough to evaluate that statement.  Still, a cross is something hard that makes us holier -- so it seems rather in keeping with that Holy Polish Pope's ideas.