Ladies, can we have an honest discussion? It’s a touchy subject and I know we aren’t all on the same page. But can you give me a moment and hear my heart? I promise in return, I will try to be gentle and open to what you have to say as well.
I think it’s well overdue that we address the elephant in the room: fertility is not a medical condition, it is a blessing. Can we stop medicating it as if it is a disease to be prevented?
I’ve heard said that to reject birth control is to reject medicine. That is simply poor logic. We use medication to treat high-blood pressure, cancer, illness, not healthy living. Grouping our healthy fertility in with diseases is misleading at best.
There is no other normal, healthy condition that we choose to treat like a disease. For some reason, we act as if we need to cast aside our femininity as a curse when it is a gift. Our bodies are designed with natural ways to space out children or avoid pregnancy altogether if needed. God built that into our bodies when He created us!
What if instead of popping pills to sterilize ourselves, we treated our fertility as something precious? Instead of looking to the world to tell us that our bodies need to be tamed, we embrace the way God created us?
For the frustrating symptoms that sometimes accompany our cycles, there are other options besides stopping healthy bodily functions. I was given birth control by the doctor for ovarian pain. A few weeks later, I was in the ER, hardly able to function because the hormones from the birth control had caused my pain to increase daily until it was unbearable.
Two years later, I am still feeling the effects daily of what it did to my body and realizing how foolish it is that birth control is the only option most doctors have for nearly any issue that plagues a woman. I’ve heard story after story from friends on the horrible side effects they experienced, from night terrors to depression. We deserve better but we’re settling for a bandaid that seems to harm more than it helps.
I encourage you to talk to your spouse and to look into Natural Family Planning and the Fertility Awareness Method. There are options that work with the way God created your body, not against it. Many people express that it strengthens their marriage and the respect their spouse has for them as a woman.
Ladies, let’s learn about our bodies. Let’s take our fertility and femininity as seriously as we take the rest of our health. God has given it to us to steward appropriately.
For some of us, that might mean delaying children. For others, that might mean welcoming (as my parents chose to) ten biological children spread over 23 years into your arms. But please, I’m begging you, let’s not act like your normal, God-given ability to create life is a disease to be avoided.