Imagine you are trying to select a wedding date and it’s right around the time your high school age cousins have a big football game. If you really want them to attend the wedding, you’ll pick the week before their game. But let’s say your budget is tight and you have no more room on your guest list. You might choose to schedule the wedding during their big game and send an invitation anyways as a sign that you still value the relationship. If they show up, it might be a bit stressful, but you’ll still be glad they came. Now, let’s imagine you don’t want to wait a week and you absolutely don’t want the cousins to come to the wedding. In order to make sure they don’t arrive, you send them a “dis-invitation” that says, “Please don’t come to our wedding, you’re not wanted here!” So how does this relate to NFP? Picking the date that works best for the cousins is like being intimate on a fertile day; you’ve created optimal conditions for children to arrive. Postponing the wedding by a week is like waiting to be intimate on an infertile day. The children probably can’t arrive, but if they do that’s still great! Sending a dis-invitation, however, is like using contraception. Just as you’d be telling your cousins, “We want this day so don’t show up and ruin it!” Using contraception sends the message to your future child (as well as God who is responsible for every blessing of pregnancy), “We want sexual pleasure at this specific time so don’t show up and ruin it!”