Love Salt Light

Intentionally growing in love.

Intentionally growing in love

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It’s really easy to forget the power of the Holy

It’s really easy to forget the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us and how much we can call on Him during mundane moments in our marriage.

A few weeks ago we’d had a tummy bug wipe through the whole family for over a week and we were exhausted.

I’d noticed before doing the night routine that Mark wasn’t in a great mood.
He did or said something (I can’t even remember now, that’s how trivial it was) but it got me annoyed and then we went our separate ways putting the kids to bed. Mentally I was already getting into the zone of “how can you be grumpy? I’m the one whose taken care of everyone this week and haven’t slept so I have the right to be in a bad mood etc etc”

Afterwards, I was walking down the stairs and heard him tinkering in the kitchen.
All I wanted to do was flop on the couch and retreat into my phone and just be alone. Ignore him. After caring for 4 sick people all week, I “deserved” to have a break.
But I quickly prayed asking what I should do w my time that evening, and before I got to the bottom of the stairs I felt the prompt to go connect.
So I did.
He was washing up so I put my phone down and just sat on the stools opposite the sink and didn’t say much.
It probably took him 30 seconds to launch into a big debrief of something that had happened at work. All he needed was for me to be available to listen. To sit and hear what had happened and witness that frustration.
His mood earlier had nothing to do with me. But I realized how easy it was to assume and then grow cold suddenly in return.

Prayer is powerful. God wants to speak to you in those little moments.
If I hadn’t of asked, I would have just done what I felt like, leaned into the narrative in my mind, ignored Mark and not engaged and most likely go to bed grumpy with each other.

If you pray, this is a little gentle reminder to engage w Him in those everyday moments of your marriage and He will always meet you with what you need to hear. #growyourlove

At the dinner table tonight Mark asked the kids to

At the dinner table tonight Mark asked the kids to say one kind thing about someone at the table. After a few comments our three year old says “mummy, I love that you hug daddy all the time and are so nice to him!” 🥺💓 then our six year old chimes in with “yeah aren’t they the perfect people to get married?!” Cue heart melt. It was such a sweet little moment and a reminder about just how much they’re observing and watching our interactions. I love that at these ages, even if they can’t remember the exact moments later - they will already have a felt sense of love, affection and security in us. They are constantly absorbing the emotional atmosphere around them. Of course we aren’t always going to get it right, but the major patterns they observe now can directly impact their own future relationships and give them a sense of stability in which they will view the world. These three precious souls are huge motivators for us to keep investing in our marriage #growyourlove

10 years From our retirement village home to comm

10 years

From our retirement village home to community housing, our family home, to renting, and now preparing for our next dream house.

From renovating, painting, gardening, landscaping, weekend projects, veggie patches, building fences, endless bunnings trips, transforming house to home.

From old second hand cars, to vans, to high performance vehicles, to the Nav and the family 4WD.

From apprentice, uni student to project manager, teacher, and stay at home mum.

From our ventures of Livewire to Charcoal and Twine to Love Salt Light.

From one puppy to two doggies and then back to one.

From camping, getaways, overseas trips, villas in Bali, to weekend sleep ins at home.

From one, two, three babies and the ones in-between we never got to meet.

From the little cents, to DINKS to living week to week.

From fine dining and bottomless brunches to $20 dates, home brewed coffee and pancakes on Sundays.

From loud board games and poker nights w mates to quiet card games and scrabble.

From gym junkies and footy fans to garage workouts, podcasts and books.

From musicals, shows and movies to no TV at all and our 9pm teas.

From concerts, festivals, live gigs to play school, hillsong lullabies, and Disney soundtracks on repeat.

From snowboarding in New Zealand, wake boarding and jet skiing on the Murray, to pushing prams and scooters.

From talking late into the night to connecting between dinner, bath and bed routines.

From kisses in the rain to hushed kisses and prayers while our babies sleep between us.

From midnight walks around Florence to find hidden bakeries to wakeful nights with our babies.

To strolling the streets and markets of Europe to the farmers markets each weekend.

From lazy winery days gone by on the Peninsula to a bottle of red shared on a Friday night.

From security and familiar, to moving interstate and navigating huge changes.

From the shores of Hawaii to the golden coast we now call home…. (Continued)

23 and 22 years young here, buying our first home.

23 and 22 years young here, buying our first home.
I remember thinking before this that it would never happen for us. All our other married friends had bought homes already. We’d searched for a year, house prices were crazy to us and we always got outbid. Mark was an apprentice when we got married and I was still in Uni.
But we saved our butts off, worked extra jobs, budgeted and worked hard some more ($10 dates started back here!) I remember thinking it was a bargain week when I scored all our veg for $7 at the markets.
When we left for our honeymoon we actually didn’t have a home to go to when we got back (makes me laugh now) but we landed in accommodation at a retirement village for a few months and then got a spot in a community housing building because our income was so low (that was a fun time w some interesting neighbours!)
This was almost nine years ago.
These days it’s even easier to compare every part of our life with someone else’s. Know that if you’re starting off your marriage in a different position to someone around you or someone you maybe admire - their story likely (actually definitely) has some challenges and hardships to get to where they’re at. It never happens as easy as it looks. The stories we could tell you of how we got to buy our first home at that age aren’t glamorous. Today we sold this home that we poured our hearts into, to help us grow as a family in this next season and looking back on all the photos has just resurfaced all those feelings of how we began. It feels like yesterday we were eating pizza on the floor with no furniture. We repurposed doors and fence palings to make tables and shelves. Mark made half the furniture we had in the house.

So if you’re a newlywed - your future is so SO bright!! Don’t be disheartened if people around you are or seem to be acquiring things (cars, pets, holidays, houses, babies) or achieving things you can’t quite do just yet. Stay firm in your goals together and it will always come together in the timing that is just right for YOU!

( Continued…) It created this intense protective

( Continued…) It created this intense protectiveness over Kai and my mind began to be plagued with irrational thoughts. The aftermath of this accident took 4 months to recover our home and yard from. So many issues and tradies in and out. Our dog constantly escaping through the broken fence. We also took our eldest son out of kinder as he showed signs of being very distressed (for a few reasons) so I had three kids at home for a number of months.

Aside from that accident, every person in our family, except me, took a trip to the emergency at some point in the last year - it honestly felt like an attack. One thing after another.
The weight of it all hit me like nothing I’ve ever felt before and my body just couldn’t handle it anymore - a huge panic attack in the middle of the night signaled loud and clear that I wasn’t ok. After that I knew I needed help. I was relieved in a way that it had shown outwardly as it gave me a reason to seek help. My nervous system was so shot and I’d been dealing with post partum anxiety without really realizing. I’d voiced my concerns to Mark here and there but he was snowed under doing crazy hours w a new role, I was falling asleep most nights with the baby and our communication was far from our normal. I remember texting him one day saying a few intense things about my mental state and that night just unraveling. He’s held me, listened, never made me feel like a burden and helped make a plan for us to find our way out.

I share all this because we have very frequently been asked about mental health and how it impacts marriages, and to be honest I never felt able to respond as we had no experience with it. We learnt a lot in 2021 and thankfully were able to walk the journey together and recover, but I do credit a lot of that to the foundations we’d set in the nine years prior.
That’s why we are so passionate about being proactive in your relationship because that’s what will hold you together when all else is crumbling. Not many people are immune to grief, struggles and trauma, it can strike at any time - but our relationship was hardly scorned, nor wavered in that season because the seeds we’d sown earlier... (comments)

We knew adjusting to three kids was going to be bi

We knew adjusting to three kids was going to be big without our usual village around in the newborn stage this time, but we didn’t expect it to hit quite so hard so soon.
Part of this story is why it was difficult to show up here as we were just getting through.
Six days after having Kai we were woken from our light slumber at 2am to the loudest sound I can recall - we thought our house had been struck by lightening. All the power went off immediately.
Running to the windows to figure out what had gone on, only to see smoke and steam rising and all our neighbours emerging.
The shock I felt to walk downstairs to find a stolen 4WD had pummeled at an unbelievable speed through our fence, knocking down 3 trees and another fence and brick wall, taking out all of our power and leaving our backyard in disarray.
Standing there w my leaky freshly postpartum body as police suddenly appeared and surveyed our yard w torches.

It was an awfully scary experience - so many what ifs. The car narrowly missed our house and went right through where our kids sit and play everyday.
We were forced to move out that next morning with no power. We had to stay in accommodation for a few days while insurance sorted it all out.
If there’s ever a time you need the safety and comfort of your own home and bed, it’s in those precious hazey first days and weeks after birth. I remember just sobbing about the full fridge, freezer and pantry I’d worked so hard to prepare for my fourth trimester.
Suddenly we were dealing with adjusting to a new baby without all our comfort things whilst trying to keep things somewhat normal for our big kids, all while in an unfamiliar location.
We all felt it deeply and there was more stress and tears than ever should have be in that postpartum time. It was out of body and looking back now I can see the impact of that experience on all our nervous systems, for the remainder of the year... my fight/flight was activated and I stayed in that zone for most of the year (continued in next post)

We always turn off the lights together, walk up th

We always turn off the lights together, walk up the stairs together, brush our teeth together, hop into bed together- I think those little moments of togetherness, make up for a lot.

*unless of course one of us has passed out with a child, which is very often right now.

We’re about to get to the end of the first year

We’re about to get to the end of the first year with our littlest love and as it draws near, it’s like a big exhale. At times that first year can feel like you’re holding your breath, searching for a new normal, tightness in your chest as you let go of the way things were. We’re coming up to SIX years of raising babies together which is wild and wonderful all at once. Six years of pregnancies and breastfeeding and sleepless nights. It all took its toll this year and my mental health took a huge hit (more on that to come). But we’re on the cusp of the change and we’re moving in the right direction again. The staleness is leaving and the light and fresh air is flowing through again. We’re committing to some new goals together and making space again for us. This week we reached two years of being in Qld so took a little Thai dinner celebration to the park. Our home in Melbourne is about to be prepared to go into the hands of another loving family and it’s scary and daunting but we’re ready to put some roots down here and see where we go. We’re approaching TEN years of married bliss in March which we are going to go BIG for! 2022 is for bringing back all our basics that fell to the wayside last year and making new habits and goals as parents of three little ones. If you’re with us, let us know ✨👌🏻🙏🏼

“Kindness isn’t just about being polite, it’

“Kindness isn’t just about being polite, it’s an active love for others.”

Are you kind to your spouse?
Loving your spouse over your lifetime means there will need to be a multifaceted perspective to your love. It’s form will require different expressions as you move through each season of life together. Even just each new day.
Unfortunately sometimes we treat the people we love the dearest, the worst, because there can be vulnerability in the unconditional. We have a deep knowing that we’ll recover from that moment of unkindness.
But I loved this way of looking at kindness as an active type of love.
How could you be more actively loving to your spouse this week? Filling up their car with petrol before work or a big drive, cooking a favorite meal, fulfilling some errands you know they haven’t had time to do, even just putting on their favorite music, carrying the bags in from the car, making the bed, putting toothpaste on their brush before bed - it can be tiny but so loving.
You already know what your spouse needs, so trust your gut and go make this next week full of kindness ✨
#growyourlove
Photo by @kyleehewitt

We have many stories to tell, lessons learned, som

We have many stories to tell, lessons learned, some questions answered and some not, we’ve made big decisions and small ones and slowly found our way as a family of five in our own time. But we want to be back here. With you and for you. To bring (y)our passion for marriage back. With balance. We’re going to show up here as much as we can and sometimes disappear again. But we’re so glad you’re still here 🧡 #growyourlove

We are like ships in the night. Not only are we ba

We are like ships in the night. Not only are we barely even passing each other but we’re navigating all new waters. Three kids and a new role with a lot more hours and travel time for Mark.

Connecting right now looks like quick kisses and hugs inbetween bedtimes that seem to go on all night, and quiet whispers in the en-suite before bed. It looks like our 9pm teas being delivered to bed while I feed and resettle our littlest late into the evening.
It’s even emailing appointments and important FYIs to each other instead of face to face. It’s broken conversations around dinner, bath bed routines. It’s a stretching season that’s for sure but our posture towards each other hasn’t changed.
Are we both feeling pretty frustrated by the situation? Yes! But we’re still trying to love on each other well.

In classic Mark fashion he had gone and organised a manicure appointment for me one afternoon while my mum is currently visiting. He wasn’t actually trying to keep it a surprise but just never actually told me about it, assuming that when I got the confirmation, I’d put two and two together and go.
However when I did get the confirmation, I just thought it was a mistake and pressed cancel. I didn’t even consider he had done it for me. I actually thought that maybe I’d accidentally made an annual appointment as I’d gone there just once roughly a year before 😂 I’m not a nails gal.
The night before, he had gone to bed early with a migraine so we hadn’t even chatted. My mum just casually mentioned it before I went to bed and then we realised what had happened!
But I couldn’t even tell Mark I’d unknowingly cancelled his surprise since he was asleep, so had to break the news via text so he’d know in the morning, as he leaves long before I wake up.
🤦🏽‍♀️ it’s the thought that counts hey.
(Continued in comments)

If your spouse is skinny, you’re into skinny. If

If your spouse is skinny, you’re into skinny. If they’re curvy, you’re into curvy, if they’re bearded, you’re into beards, if they’re bald, you’re into bald, if they’re tall, you’re into tall.
It’s never sat right with me when people make lists or talk about/ swoon over other people they’re attracted to, could figuratively “get with” if they had the opportunity, and so on.
It’s not because I’m some prude who doesn’t think any one else in the world is attractive, BUT I firstly and wholeheartedly think Mark IS the best looking guy in the world but secondly, I just don’t let my mind go down that track of comparing or lusting... even if it’s just for fun. I feel it’s a small seed which can lead to an array of issues.
I think whether those conversations are in public or private or just internal, either way they’re dangerous seeds.
I’ve consciously never engaged in those discussions to protect my own mind.
I think sometimes people think saying it out loud around their spouse is less harmful because they’re being transparent but you are still communicating to your spouse that there are other people you find MORE attractive or more desirable than them.

I’ve never heard Mark say those types of comments either. Not that he’s never struggled with lust or issues of that sort but I’ve never felt second best in his eyes. No matter how I’ve changed physically over the years, he consistently and regularly compliments my physical features and dampens every self-criticizing thought in my mind.
For women, intimacy is HIGHLY linked to how you feel about yourself. If I’m aware that Mark thinks person a,b,c is more desirable than myself, it’s going to short circuit my ability in some way to feel vulnerable and intimate w him.
By avoiding these conversations and building each other up through regular and specific compliments, you are affirming your spouse’s self esteem. When someone knows they are loved, the inner beauty shines out of them. “Beauty grows in a culture of love.” By the end of today, try to let your husband or wife know a specific part of them that you find attractive and watch their face light up 🌼 #growyourlove