Speating?

SPEATING?

When I first married my second husband I was 29 years old, and recently widowed. I had four children that I brought with me into this new partnership, Stan brought two children of his own. We were both broken injured people. I having lost a spouse, and Stan having been abandoned by his wife for a drug addiction  and an affair with his brother. He had struggle to raise two very young children, work and go to school nights on his own for 4 years.
As we struggled together to  make this new marriage work our lack of preparedness become more and more apparent. I had been raised in a Christian home, attended a Christian school, I had never smoked, drank, or allowed a swear word to escape my Christian lips. I could quote hundreds of Bible verses, and could sing every Amy Grant song in the catalogue. Stan on the other hand had been raised in a culture of drugs and alcohol. He had become a Christian 4 years previously at the age of 36. He had known and even believed the Gospel message for years since his years in the Navy, but had not made the decision to give his life to God until his wife left him.
Stan came from a more stoic "catholic, German mother" family background "very limited physical contact", I came from a background of bear hugs and kisses. He is an introvert, I am not, at all!, He is frugal, I am not, at all! He thinks things through, I jump. He likes a quiet home life, I love a party atmosphere. Our one commonality became our worst nightmare....legalism. That's the short list of the obstacles that were ahead for us.
We had 6 children between us when we married and would have our 7th two years later. I was homeschooling the kids, running a home business and working in the church. Stan was building a room in the attic for my mother who was soon to come live with us and working overtime as an electrician to feed 9 people.
We began to fight, attacking each other under the stress. Our kids were just as broken as we were after the death of their father and losing a mother to drugs. We were the parents, but we were not fit to lead or help anyone heal. We all desperately needed help, and had no idea were to go.
We were lacking a church family at the time. We had left the church were we had met, because they felt Stan should not remarry after being divorced, even though his wife had left him to be with someone else. He had lived alone with his  kids for five years before we married. but the church felt that scripturally he was never free to re-marry. Once we were married we looked for a church here we could start over and did finally find one. The next 12 years were a jumble of counselors, guilt, desperation, fights, and pain, for all involved.
It was during these years that I turned to eating and spending for stress relief and comfort. I learned that I could go into another world where fast food and credit cards would get me through. I ran up bills and ate my way through a lot of years, but God was not absent. God as He does was working quietly to bring beauty from the pain, and healing that He alone would get the glory for.
Stan and I have been married now for 24 years and God has been so good to us. Our 7 kids are grown and we have 6 beautiful grandchildren. We belong to a church body in Portland where we have attended and served for the past 8 years.
Speating (spending+eating)is how God led me to His answers for my desperate cry for healing. Where counselors and books couldn't go, He did (or, I should, say He is!)
Speating is a combination of my first therapies of choice SPENDING+EATING.
This blog and the book that will follow are about my journey through frustrating years of diets and budgets to a deeper relationship with God that would bring so much more than weight loss and a savings account; join me on a journey to freedom.