I’m probably a little late to the game, but I recently finished reading C.S. Lewis’, The Screwtape Letters. If you’re not familiar with this classic, it is a series of letters written in satire from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, who is in charge of the damnation of a young man. He details how to lead this man to Hell and away from the “Enemy” – his term for God. 

I then moved to reading Emily Wilson Hussem’s Sincerely, Stoneheart written in the same spirit but with women’s hearts and unique, present-day struggles in mind.  These books have begun to make me stop and think about how the devil may be  working in my own life and the lives of others. Lewis does, however, warn in the preface to his masterpiece, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” Please know that I try to take the balanced approach both in this post and my own life.

During this Natural Family Planning (NFP) awareness week, I  started thinking about how the devil uses something as good and beautiful as NFP to hurt a couple’s relationship and make  women not feel good enough. When I say that NFP is good and beautiful, it isn’t to deny the complicated relationship couples with infertility have with it. It is good and beautiful that God gave us sex for babies and bonding, times of fertility and infertility in the menstrual cycle, and signs in our body so we can decide to try to conceive or postpone pregnancy. The NFP chart also aids as a diagnostic tool in figuring out the root causes of women’s health issues, including infertility, and allows women to be in touch with different symptoms they experience cyclically. 

I recognize that it feels cruel to be following the Church’s teaching regarding NFP when many Catholics are not, and with a strong desire for children, to use days of fertility with no physical fruit. Satan hates life, so we can clearly see how he takes something as good and beautiful as sex and tempts people to use it just for pleasure and not for generating life. He can also tempt people to use sex for generating life and not for bonding or showing love to your spouse, as in IVF.

While procreation and unity are not disrupted in the couple with infertility using NFP with the hope of conceiving a child, Satan still wants to disturb a couple’s sexual and overall relationship. In treating couples with infertility in my NaPro practice, when I see that a couple is only having intercourse during the time of fertility, I try to have a conversation about how the pressure to perform during the fertile window is affecting their relationship. Satan wants a cross like infertility to drive a wedge between you and your spouse and to keep you from enjoying the gift of your spouse. Of course, sex is not the only way that spouses express their love (think SPICE to those who chart with Creighton) but it is an important part of the marital relationship. I encourage spouses to express to each other how they are feeling during the fertile time when they are looking at the chart, as well as having intercourse outside the fertile time so as not to feel that the only reason they are having sex is to have a baby (although I understand how it may sometimes feel that way). 

For a woman especially, feeling an emotional connection with her husband and “dating” him can help sex seem less like a chore to check off the list (in the good and holy desire for a child) and more like a giving and receiving of the gift of her spouse. Flirting throughout the day, making a candlelit dinner, or any other activity that makes each other feel loved are just a few examples.

Another common theme I see in difficulties with NFP on the path of infertility is the NFP chart as a source of feeling less-than. As women, we are constantly bombarded with perfectly curated Instagram reels and influencer posts that make us feel like we will never be good enough as a wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, or coworker. The NFP chart is no different. When we are shown what a “normal menstrual cycle” looks like with a period, dry days, a six day mucus buildup, and dryness again and our NFP chart looks nothing like this, we feel like a failure. My body isn’t doing what it was made to do. With mucus like that I’ll never get pregnant. If I take this supplement maybe my chart will look like it’s supposed to. Yes we can help to optimize our fertility by taking medications, supplements, and doing diet changes, but at the end of the day we are not in as much control as we think we are, or would like to be. And our worth isn’t found in our mucus cycle score. Sometimes I talk to my patients about discontinuing charting, at least for a while, to help eliminate a daily source of not feeling good enough. 

Once, in high school, a teacher was praying over me and saw an image of Satan looking like a terrible monster and saying to me, “Not good enough.” As a chronic perfectionist, I felt this way a lot and although I have gone through a lot of healing, I still struggle with this feeling. What he also saw was God putting up a barrier so that I wouldn’t hear the devil anymore and he wouldn’t have power over me. He wants to do the same for you. He wants you to live in your identity as His Beloved (I love Sarah Kroger’s Belovedness and Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved) and not as a sum of your weakness (St. John Paul II, World Youth Day Homily, 2002). He wants to love you through your spouse amidst this heavy cross of infertility. He wants to hold you close and thank you for your witness of desiring to bring forth good fruit from your marriage.

Please know that I am praying for you and rooting for you on this crazy journey to Heaven.

Caroline Gindhart is a nurse practitioner at Divine Mercy Women’s Health in Camp Hill/Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She received her nursing degrees from Penn State University. In her professional work, she diagnoses the root causes of infertility and treats in a way that cooperates with the woman’s cycle using her training in the Creighton Model and NaPro Technology.