{"id":4780,"date":"2005-07-26T12:15:11","date_gmt":"2005-07-26T12:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/a-good-blend.html"},"modified":"2005-07-26T12:15:11","modified_gmt":"2005-07-26T12:15:11","slug":"a-good-blend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/a-good-blend.html","title":{"rendered":"A Good Blend"},"content":{"rendered":"

From San Antonio, a wonderful story:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The 13-month-old marriage of Frances and Jeff Spalding and the making of their family of 14 children is a story of faith, family and the Internet. <\/p>\n

Frances, 38, and Jeff, 40, are devout Catholics who were widowed just more than a year apart. The couple met via Ave Maria Singles \u2014 a Web site "for committed, faith-filled, marriage-minded <\/em>(their emphasis) Catholic singles" \u2014 courted long-distance between Texas and Kentucky, and married 41\/2 months later, on June 18, 2004, her late mother’s birthday. <\/p>\n

She had seven children; he had six. With the birth of Cecilia, they <\/em>now have 14, ranging in age from 17 to 4 months and including two 11-year-olds, two 7-year-olds and 8-year-old twin girls. In addition to Cecilia, Isaac, Gabriel, Stephen, Gretchen and the twins, Sarah and Veronica, there is Chasity, 17, Mary, 14, William, 13, Christopher, 11, Elizabeth, 9, Bernadette, 7, and Jacinta, 5. Rounding out the family is a deaf black-and-white mutt named Gus-Gus and an indestructible Japanese fighting fish, Mr. Bubbles. <\/p>\n

What some might regard as a leap of faith, the Spaldings and their loved ones believe is God’s will in motion. Not just in the way they met, but in the symmetry of their temperaments, backgrounds and beliefs and in the way their journey as a family continues to unfold. "I just know the good Lord had a hand in this," says Frances’ father, Felix Lange. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From San Antonio, a wonderful story: The 13-month-old marriage of Frances and Jeff Spalding and the making of their family of 14 children is a story of faith, family and the Internet. Frances, 38, and Jeff, 40, are devout Catholics who were widowed just more than a year apart. The couple met via Ave Maria…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nA Good Blend - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/a-good-blend.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Good Blend - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From San Antonio, a wonderful story: The 13-month-old marriage of Frances and Jeff Spalding and the making of their family of 14 children is a story of faith, family and the Internet. Frances, 38, and Jeff, 40, are devout Catholics who were widowed just more than a year apart. The couple met via Ave Maria…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/a-good-blend.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-07-26T12:15:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Good Blend - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/a-good-blend.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Good Blend - Via Media","og_description":"From San Antonio, a wonderful story: The 13-month-old marriage of Frances and Jeff Spalding and the making of their family of 14 children is a story of faith, family and the Internet. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}