My wife has a eating Disorder.....

How did this happen? I have asked myself this question for the last six months, non stop. I wake up wondering why this is, I go to sleep wondering what the next day will be like. Eating Disorders change everything, and I do mean everything. Once the disorder was discovered, it was devastating. Anorexia just sounds scary, but honestly, I had to go find my laptop to find out exactly what we were dealing with. With a quick google search and a few wiki articles, I knew enough to know that this was serious. I then searched the internet to find a blog or something from a husband of a wife who was dealing with an eating disorder. Nothing.... Men don't blog about eating disorders, fact is, I did not know that men blogged at all. It was always what my wife's friends did, bragging about their amazing kids or the vacations that they went on. No, in my world, men don't blog.

Let me give you a little back ground on me to give you an idea of where I am coming from. I grew up in the Northwest, I was a quiet kid. Had my fair share of mischief with my siblings. I was the good kid who loved to fix stuff. I remember being 10 years old and our electric can opener broke. I asked my mom if I could have it and I took it down to my bedroom and tore it apart, fixed it, and brought it back to my mom with a huge smile on my face. So I am a fixer, it is important to realize that as I go through the coming months of my life. I grew up in a loving family, dad went to work everyday, building homes and providing for his family. Eight kids was a lot, we were well known in our community for how many kids we had in the family. My mother stayed home with us, cooked us delicious food and wiped away tears when needed. We moved to the Rocky mountain west in my teenage years, I went from being an anomaly in my high school of being the only kid that went hunting or fishing, to fitting right in with dirt bike riding, mountain conquering, horse riding lifestyle of the West. And I loved it! We farmed 200 acres of alfalfa, working when the sun came up and not getting done till after it was dark. Those were the days that I loved, we would steal away in the afternoon and swim in the canals or fish in the rivers when it got hot. I was a tough guy, I remember sitting with my friends one day, next to a ant hill, seeing who could eat the most ants.... haha, weird I know. My dad taught me and my brother how to build homes. I spend many of my teenage days with a nail belt strapped around me, nailing 2x4's together. During my senior year in high school, my dad was building us a new house and he had me help him through out the school year. I was not going to go to college so I did not care if I missed a lot of school. I still managed to get almost straight A's but was not interested in going any further in my formal education. I remember walking into my English class at the end of the year and after asking the teacher a question, she looked at me and asked, "Are you in my class?" haha, I was not there a lot. So I graduated worked for a year, saved enough money to go on a LDS mission to Australia for two years. That was eye opening. It was also life changing, I went from being quiet and reserved to talkative and likeable. I knocked thousands of doors and talked to thousands of people on the streets of Australia for those two years. It was one of the best and hardest times of my life. I came home, got my hammer back out, bought a truck and began building homes again.

 I met the love of my life 'Jane' and we were married and started our life together. We were in love, I built us a little house we named the 'love shack' and we lived the American dream. Babies started to come, we struggled to provide, more babies came and we built our own amazingness. My days were spent pouring concrete and nailing wood together, my wife's days were spent wiping bums and wiping tears. We had it all. As life progressed, we made good financial decisions and the work got easier, to a point where most of my days were spent behind a computer, directing the work and spending time together as a family. We had it all, six amazing kids, a beautiful home, a stable career and a happy marriage. We bought 50 acres, had horses, chickens, a few dogs and a pond for the kids to play in and catch fish on hot summer days. I was madly in  love with my wife, amazed at the blessings God had given me in a short 14 years together. We were that family that everyone thinks has it together, kids were always clean and polite, husband and wife were always holding hands. We were living the dream.

Our world came crashing down though, it started gradually, my wife started to withdraw from me and the chilluns. Her health was not good and she never felt right. She did not look good, I figured she would get it figured out, she went to doctors and chiropractors, nature paths and specialists. Nothing came of  it, she started losing weight and becoming more depressed. I tried to talk to her but I was never good at being empathetic or understanding, I would offer a fix and move along, hoping that she would figure it out but knowing that there was underlying tension brewing. I noticed big differences in her daily life, she would check her weight constantly, eat very little, and what she did eat was weird. Lettuce with mustard, hashed turnips, salad with nothing on it. The kids noticed as well but we were all aloof to the what the issue was. In almost all cases of eating disorders, the husband is the last to know. It all came to a head on the day after Thanksgiving, my brother and I took my six kids, and his five, up to the mountains to cut a few Christmas trees down. He wanted to go for a short hike to find the perfect Christmas tree. We left the kids for a few minutes and started walking through the snow and started to talk. He is a EMT, he knows a little bit about sickness and health. He expressed his concern towards my wife's heath, I brushed it off, telling him she would figure it out. He boldly told me that she would not and that he was pretty sure she had a eating disorder. I argued that she did not and he told me to go home and ask her. I agreed, knowing deep down inside that he was right. Part of me wanted to ignore it, hoping it would go away. I went home that night, got the kids to bed, told my wife that we needed to talk. She knew why, we sat down in the living room and I asked to tell me what was going on. This was a hard moment on her, one of the most difficult of her life. Her secret of 20 years was about to come to light. And.... our lives would never be the same again.....

So now you know about me a little bit. I like to have fun, I like to explore, I love my family. I have softened from my tough persona as a teenager and construction guy, but still like to hike the hills or break a horse. The posts that I will write in the coming days will show a transformation in me. I rely on God for my strength, know that in reading these posts. If that bothers you, don't read what I write. I could not do the things I need to do without His help. He has given me the strength I need when I am at my lowest. What I hope to show by writing my experiences is that the road of being married to an eating disordered wife is a tough one. It is lonely and it is dark. Adding to that struggle the responsibility of taking care of six little kids and still providing for a family, it can seem almost unbearable at times. But it is possible to find peace and joy, it is not the end, but the beginning of a surreal journey of ups and lots of downs. And no matter what the outcome will be for me, which I do not know,  I am confident that in the end it all works out and the pain and the hurt will be washed away through the sacrifice and love of Christ. That I am sure, and for that I am willing to endure the pain to find the joy....