Testimony: Embracing God’s Plan for Marriage
By Tima Borges
Our conversion story starts ten years into our marriage. While Dave and I were both raised in Catholic families, we had only a vague understanding of what it meant to be Catholic. We attended Mass on most Sundays, prayed occasionally, mostly in times of struggle, and went to Confession once or twice a year during Lent and Advent. We followed the minimum precepts of the Catholic faith.
Our change of heart happened when we learned the Church’s teaching on openness to life. When we read St. John Paul II’s Letter to Families and learned the Theology of the Body, we came to accept God’s plan for marriage and family.
We had not always followed the Church’s teaching, partly because we did not know God’s plan. No one had ever told us, and, if they tried to, we did not fully understand. We thought we had a choice about how to plan our family. Of course, we did—the choice to follow God’s plan for marriage and family or to let sin into our marriage.
When we allowed sin into our marriage, our intimacy was hindered. We didn’t know why things were going wrong; we just knew something was wrong. Our arguments focused on how often we were intimate and who initiated intercourse. I felt like an object for his pleasure. Spending intimate time with Dave felt like an additional chore to add to my list. Dave could not understand what I was going through. When I tried to communicate with him, he took it personally. As a result, we grew distant and other parts of our marriage were affected. We became simply two adults sharing the same living space. We spoke to each other only when absolutely necessary and then superficially.
Once we positioned ourselves to learn God’s plan for marriage and family, our eyes were open. We learned that God designed marriage for the good of man and woman and for the healthy future of society. God created the world and all the creatures in it, but he gave human beings a special dignity, knowledge, intellect, and the natural law. He loves us so much. He shares his creative powers with his creation. Out of our love for each other, we too can create new life in the marital embrace. We perform the physical act and God implants the soul. It’s beautiful! How could we not want to be a part of this creation?
We realized God’s plan was in line with our human nature, and that it was about love and trust. He always wants the conjugal act to balance unity and openness to life. When we use contraception, we take away our openness to life, which respects our full human nature, all because we want the focus to be solely on unity and enjoyment. The ability to create life is a precious gift, yet we squander it and trample on it for the sake of physical enjoyment.
Looking back, we can see the consequences of our choices, both spiritual and physical. Spiritually we had taken God out of the equation. By using contraception, we were saying to God, “I believe in you, but I don’t trust you to know what is best for our family.” We paid a hefty price for this choice: struggles in our marriage, unhealthy relationships, and harmful habits that went against our marriage vow and disrespected our dignity as human beings. Not to mention that “the Pill kills,” as I now know. How many spontaneous miscarriages did I have in those ten years? Only God knows.
As a result of taking the Pill for ten years, my hormone levels are very low. My uterus probably has aged an extra year for every year that I was on the Pill. My estrogen and progesterone levels are very low. This hormone imbalance also affects my mood and libido.
Dave’s vasectomy took something away from our marriage bond; we were incomplete. Thanks to our conversion, he reversed the vasectomy, offering up the risk he took undergoing the surgery and the pain in recovery for all the souls who are yet to come into the light of God’s endless mercy and love.
After the vasectomy reversal, we eagerly anticipated welcoming a new baby into our family. We prayed to accept God’s will for us, as we had now put this aspect of our marriage in God’s hands, where it should have been all along. It took three years and the help of a Napro-technology doctor for us to finally conceive. I have been pregnant three times since then. We have six children, two in Heaven as a result of miscarriages, and four we are blessed to witness growing up.
We recommend further reading and education in this area of God’s teaching. Theology of the Body and Saint John Paul II’s letters on human dignity and God’s plan for marriage and family offer a treasure of information for husbands and wives. There is so much available to us within the Church’s two thousand years of experience. It is well worth learning.
Tima Borges lives with her husband and four boys in Ontario, Canada. She writes for Faith Catholic and shares her powerful testimony of God working in her personal blog. She works with engaged couples preparing for marriage and assists with coordinating faith-based events for women and families. Her story is featured in Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies, available on JoyAlive.net/shop/.
