The Sinner's Guide to Natural Family Planning

Honest. Real.Faithful. So Refreshing!
Anyone trying to be faithful to the Catholic Church's teachings knows it can be trying, at times, & yet Simcha reminds us that our marriage, our family, eternity is worth the struggle. She discuses ways to improve the difficulties with great wit & laugh-out-loud humor.

This book is excellent for married folks even if they are not charting cycles. It candidly deals with the marital embrace and how it affects, and is affected by, the entire relationship. An easy read, and very insightful.

Simcha does an excellent job offering balm for some of the stings of NFP as well as laughs to remind you why you're doing it (or not!). Each chapter peels back another layer of the under-discussed peripherals of NFP. Though the book is not a theological discussion, it is rooted in the faith and offers a fresh and necessary perspective of encouragement through solidarity.

I. Love. It. the author's humility, self-deprecation and sense of humor on the topic of NFP make it so approachable, especially to a couple who maybe isn't "feelin' it" quite yet. Plus, she offers so much wisdom and encouragement to do the hard work of cultivating holiness and unity in marriage.

As someone who is prepping for marriage and is both enchanted by and utterly terrified of NFP... Thank you. My SO got a kick out of it too. It made me laugh, cry, and think--a LOT--about the theology behind everything, and the reality of what I'm getting myself into.

Finally a realistic view of using NFP from a fellow Catholic mom in the trenches! Simcha infuses humor and profound truths into an easily understood style that was a pleasure to read. Having used NFP (after 16 yrs of **gasp** contraception and even a sterilization that was later reversed) to space pregnancies and then seriously avoiding during some difficult premenopausal yrs, I could relate to much of what Simcha wrote. HIGHLY recommend this book!

Humorous, and honest look at practicing nfp. So helpful to know that others struggle in similar ways as we do! Lots of great questions to ponder as we try to figure out how to stay the course. Challenging and uplifting at the same time. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to love their spouse better.

Very helpful and entertaining!!! Founded in truth!!! Just wish I didn't have to hide it from my children's eyes until I can duct tape the terrible imagery ... Really wish the cover reflected more reverence towards Church teaching like the content does. Publishers, if you're reading this, sure, Catholics embrace self giving sexuality, but I don't need another prompt this day in age to spark the conversation with my kids. Especially when a confessional is involved.... The cover also removes it from being gift-worthy. Some of us just can't go there... :-/

Love the book, would recomed for anybody using or exploring NFP, give me some good insights, this book is not learn any form of NFP, but gives good tools for discerning. I really like the is not target to one audience.

This book is a great quick read (important for busy parents). Simcha writes about all the other issues with NFP not about how to chart but how to talk to your husband and yourself about NFP and marital relations in general.

Simcha has an easy, down to earth writing style.
She hits on the mark that NFP has its challenges but the rewards for commitment (in good times and bad) are eternally rewarding for the couple and their family...+

Beautifully and humorously written, this insightful book offers invaluable advice for couples practicing natural family planning on how to go beyond the mechanics (and struggles) to reap the deeper, emotional, and spiritual benefits NFP offers.

No one talks about NFP's inconvenience and how it feels like it doesn't do anything but strain your marriage. It is incredibly refreshing to read that we are alone. Fisher lightheartedly deals with the inconvenience and the downright terrible aspects of NFP all the while making you an even bigger advocate for the cause. There were points that I thought this was a personal letter to me. This book is a must for every couple learning, practicing or giving up on NFP, but especially to the younger and the newlyweds. It should also be a read for any skeptics of NFP. I finished this book with the belief that I had the tools and the wisdom to make NFP benefit my marriage and my soul. Bravo Fisher!

Books and literature tackling this subject matter are in demand for especially the Catholic community or any married Christian searching for a healthy physical and spiritual "sex life." Love and empathy of the other spouse should always be taken into consideration. I like this book because it tells those who are having a struggle with God's plan for sexuality within marriage where to go (confession), and how to talk to your spouse. So much of the honeymoon advertising of NFP literature should be rewritten to conform to the reality of the Catholic of the 21st century! There is redemption in suffering and growth, there is joy in this truth.

Realistic and insightful... Funny and yet still respectful. A good read for any NFP practicing couple! She helps show that no two couples experience is the same. NFP, like all of life, is always a unique adventure!

Simcha has a knack for being warmly humorous, unexpectedly deep, and startlingly (and helpfully) honest all at once. It is what makes her so eminently relatable, and so adept at taking on issues that easily polarize Catholics. "The Sinners Guide..." is full of practical wisdom drawn from lived Catholic experience filtered through the rich resources of the tradition. It is her genius for disarming us through humor -- for making us laugh at ourselves just enough -- that makes her delivery so effective, and the discussion (and the marriages) she helps so fruitful.

Simcha has a knack for being warmly humorous, unexpectedly deep, and startlingly (and helpfully) honest all at once. It is what makes her so eminently relatable, and so adept at taking on issues that easily polarize Catholics. "The Sinners Guide..." is full of practical wisdom drawn from lived Catholic experience filtered through the rich resources of the tradition. It is her genius for disarming us through humor -- for making us laugh at ourselves just enough -- that makes her delivery so effective, and the discussion (and the marriages) she helps so fruitful.

Simcha Fisher is to be commended for this wonderful work!

She manages to, at one and the same time, provide a serious and humourous treatment of an important topic while navigating the fine line between being too other-wordly or too clinical. Above all, however, this work should be received as a message of hope: the hard work that marital chastity entails is real but so too are the rewards. Mrs. Fisher has (and is) traveling down the path (sometimes willingly, sometimes kicking and screaming) of fidelity to Christ as a married person and I am grateful for the insights she shares in this book.

Love it. As an engaged woman practicing NFP, this reading provides insight on the challenges that may lie ahead--and how to face these challenges, in order to keep my marriage strong and grounded in faith.

Loved this. Brings the awesome voice of Simcha to book form, which is awesome because who doesn't love more Simcha? The only sad spot is that this book is short. I would love to sit down and talk about all these wonderful things with her... well, maybe not. It could get awkward real fast.

ANYWAY. Get this book! It's even getting me to be more intimate with my husband, I read him passages I thought were hilarious, and since it was out of context he sat there and stared at me before watching more football (or baseball... or some other sport).

Great title with wonderful, hilarious, insightful content. I've been married 33 yrs. and loved this book! I even read some of it out loud to two of my two adult daughters and had them laughing! But it also has a witty, and yet profound capacity that discerns the true nature of discernment/NFP in marriage. Five stars.

I had such a journey while reading your book! There are so many things that I have been thinking about but not been able to put the right words to my thoughts, and finally someone has been able to do so. I am going to be using your book to guide me in the discussions and steps I need to take with my husband to make our marriage better. You have given me the inspiration I need to start being a better spouse.

NFP can be science-based and medically proven… but that doesn't make it easy to live. The Sinner's Guide to Natural Family Planning is a funny and thoughtful take addresses NFP affects a marriage relationship. Whether NFP is going well, or isn't, whether you are starting out, or experts, everyone can benefit from Simcha's wisdom and insight. It gave me more compassion for those who struggle with NFP. This book has made me a better wife, friend, and Christian. This is a collection, not a how-to book. I recommend it for engaged and married couples, and for all NFP instructors!

This book was funny, thought provoking and really helped me feel that my husband and I weren't the only one's going through these struggles. We have used NFP for our entire marriage and find that it causes more fights than it helps, but I thought maybe we were doing something wrong. This book really helps bring to light how much more prayer and communication we need to help us, as well as a bit more understanding on both sides. Simcha is a wonderful writer, witty and not afraid to call you out if you need it. I plan to read it again right now!

Simcha doesn't mince words and cuts through all the fluff getting to the real issues involved in using NFP. The tough subjects are broached with honesty, humor and candor. Finally! Thank you, Simcha. Thank you.

This is the NFP book that desperately needed to be written, and I’m so, so glad that Simcha Fisher was the one to write it. Her voice is ideal for delivering straight talk, sending me into side-splitting laughter at one moment and then quietly stunning me with simply stated bits of enduring truth. Beautifully done. I’ll be reading it again and giving copies to friends.

My only quibbles with the book were the places that left me wanting more . . . I especially wanted to hear even more about her experience with prudence. And I would have loved to see one more chapter in NFP and the Rest of the World, something more specific that would help those of us who are “the face of NFP” to be gracious when friends and family and others want to call out our craziness. So I hope there’s another book in Fisher’s future. Discerningly spaced, of course.

Here’s the thing: on a 5-point scale, I only give 5 stars to C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and children’s books with gorgeous illustrations. This book comes extremely close to the 5-star mark; after all, Fisher quotes Lewis and channels Chesterton, and the absence of illustrations, in this particular title, is a mercy. Loved it.

This book profoundly summarizes the real glories (and the real trials of glory) of marital union. One criticism:

Throughout the book the underlying assumption is the avoidance of pregnancy. While not espousing providentialism, I wanted for more development on the sense that openness to conception might well be the norm for many (or perhaps most) marriages. Too much emphasis on our "planning" and not enough on nature can result in man missing the good that God has in mind for mankind overall,

There is a natural spacing of children that is very beneficial to the siblings and to the mother's recouperation that results from 6 to 21 months of amenorrhea during nursing-on-demand. Of course there are numerous couples who prudently need to avoid more pregnancy. There are other, however, that succumb to societal norms or fears and "plan" based upon an artificial schedule (confer Catechism 2373, 1652, and that paragraph that I cannot find that says something like: Parents should not consider children as something that makes them look good nor as something that can be brought into existence on a schedule to fit our desires for a particular age spacing etc. .... (Sorry, I know it's in their but it is time to attend to my children!).

It is curious to me that the concept of "ecological breast feeding" was pushed out of the Couple to Couple League along with the Kipleys.

As a newly engaged woman--absolutely dedicated to NFP but with not even a single clue about what I am getting myself into...well, I needed this. It answered more questions than I even thought to ask. It brought reality (and the trenches) together with all the happiness of new love together in a way I've never seen, instead of saying the usual: "You think it will be fun, but you will HATE it!!" Anyway, I could not more highly reccomend this book, and I am deeply grateful for it.

When someone asks how NFP works or how to practice it, they expect to be given a list of rules and techniques for measuring bodily signs. That is the superficial answer. This book gives the real answer.

With this book, you will learn that you are not the only one that struggles with a system Fisher dubs "the worst possible method, except for all the others". You will learn that the benefits of NFP are real but that, much like the benefits of training for a marathon, they are not free. And you will also learn some techniques that allow you to laugh at yourself and make the whole thing a little less painful and a lot more loving.

Fisher doesn't shy away from the challenges inherent in every marriage, but leaves you inspired to do the hard work to help transform your marriage into the grace-filled sacrament it is meant to be.

This book gives perspective and depth to "the NFP party line". It's NOT all flowers and honeymoons, and goshgolly I wish someone had told my husband and I that at the beginning of our marriage! Natural Family Planning IS about self-sacrifice and love ("When he gets home, stop what you're doing and make a fuss over him. It's not June Cleaver, it's love.") I appreciate how Simcha Fisher offers her humor and wisdom to the NFP discussion.

The great thing about Simcha Fisher's writing is that she engages her reader. I was delighted to read this book, because it wasn't a "how to" guide. There is a ton of other material out there on the mechanics of NFP. This book is a great resource about what goes into a thriving relationship, and why NFP goes hand-in-hand with a generous, spiritually/physically healthy outlook. I hope the author keeps going and makes this Book one of a series.

A very entertaining read. I like how the author is honest and practical about NFP and its functionality. While I respect her approach to dealing with the struggles and hardships of practicing NFP, I can't help but disagree a bit with her interpretation of what is "acceptable" and what isn't within the guidelines of Church teaching. Again, she is honest in her book, which I like, but I think many might disagree with a few of the points concerning that. Otherwise, it was a very easy, enjoyable read.