NFP over Chocolate Martinis

I know, doesn't that just speak enticing? It was. Who wouldn't listen to a medical discourse on natural family planning with a martini in hand right? ; )  Needless to say it was a great way to start National NFP week off with a bang!

Chocolate Martini with Hoho garnish.
Disclaimer: Drink may be dangerous during times of abstinence.

This past weekend Andrew and I were invited to attend a nfp presentation given by Doctors, Todd Bowman, PhD and Don Bell, MA on the neuroscience of increasing intimacy while practicing nfp for the post contraceptive couple. They discussed Pair Bonding, a process of building our "bonding contacts" that we create the resilience to overcome the stresses of life, as well as what roles the hormones Oxytocin and Dopamine play in our sex lives and ultimately our marriage. I'll post more details about this later this week!!



The event was hosted by Dr. Laurie Heap, mother of four, in her lovely Kansas City home Friday evening. We gathered there with dozens of doctors, couples, and promoters of natural family planning around the area. Of course, it can never hurt provide loads of appetizers and drinks like grapefruit martinis while we listened to cunning edge medical research being applied to natural family planning, supper classy and smart ;)

Laurie, and her KU martini glass, on the left.

                                             

Did I mention homemade ice cream with blueberry sauce was served for dessert?  

We came away with incredible information and refreshed with meeting some stellar fellow nfp couples.

This is Elizabeth. She is the 9th in a family of 10, a nurse, and expecting her 5th boy in August! I can't wait to do an NFP Women Bio on her!!

I spotted her feather earrings and had to meet her ;)

I'm convinced more and more, that it isn't just my mother's thing, not just some personal private way I am faithful to the church's teaching, not a stale method of rules and charts from marriage prep class, but an awe striking, undeniable method to ensure a deeper stronger love life and the foundation to unbreakable family life.

Women are longing for this, families will thrive and SURVIVE with this. The more we share its truth and capabilities, the more the world around us will change for the better.

As my favorite man said before, " The level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. This is because there is a basic difference between knowing and loving. In knowing something you bring it down to the level of your understanding. An abstract principle of physics can be understood by an ordinary mind only by examples. But in loving we always go up to meet the demand of the one loved. If you love music you have to submit to its laws and disciplines. When man loves woman, it follows the nobler the woman the nobler the love, the higher the demands by the woman, the more worthy a man must be. That is why a woman is the measure of the level of our civilization."  Venerable Fulton Sheen, The World's First Love

If you change the heart of a women, you change her family, the cell of society. Let us all renew the call we all have to bring others, especially women, our friends and sisters, to the truth about the gift of their sexuality!

Happy NFP Week!