Love Salt Light

Intentionally growing in love.

Intentionally growing in love

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Have you noticed a pattern in your behavior toward

Have you noticed a pattern in your behavior towards your spouse? Is daily life overwhelming with your spouse but you cant put a finger on why or what exactly is stressing you out? Or have you noticed your spouse seems more irritated than normal or just not themselves?
Whilst I am not qualified to speak on this in any educated way, I would just say to get curious on the way your nervous system responds to stress or an issue between you and your spouse. When you are stressed, do you go into fight mode, want to leave suddenly, retreat and just please the other person or freeze into silence? (You might know these responses as Fight, Flight, Fawn or Freeze.)
What I’ve noticed is that often we keep playing out the same situation - we are continually attracted to the same problems to try get a different result in order to heal something in our subconscious.

Try to take a step back and ask yourself what else could be going on in your spouse’s world and why they’re reacting that way towards you. Sometimes it’s nothing to do with you or what you did, rather it was a reaction due to an unhealed or suppressed feeling from another past event.

If these feelings of overwhelm are surfacing regularly in your marriage, and you’re getting stuck on how to resolve them - it may be a good first step to get some professional help. Seeing a counsellor or a psychologist isn’t just for when you’re on the brink of divorce. It can be such a healthy preventative practice for the individual and then it’s benefits flow into the marriage.

Over the last few years, parenting was bringing up a lot of anxiety and triggers for me and whilst our marriage wasn’t suffering, I was, and I knew I needed help.
After having a panic attack a year ago, it led me to realising my nervous system was very overloaded and needed a lot of support!! Not just from parenting but my body was harboring a lot of stress from my childhood.

So for the last 12 months, we’ve prioritized taking care of my mental health. I’ve done breathwork courses, craniosacral therapy and regular somatic counselling which have been greatly beneficial for myself to heal the underlying things going on.
(Continued in comments)

Do you have a vision for your marriage? In this in

Do you have a vision for your marriage? In this instant gratification generation, there is sometimes little regard for patience and perseverance. A healthy marriage takes effort and commitment over time.

It struck us one day when making renovation plans, how much detail, money and time we were putting into our home. Yes, the home we live in is important to our relationship, but do we ever sit down and take the time to make a “plan” for our marriage? If there are no common goals, what will keep us together in the face of trouble? Are we just hoping for the best? Surely the marriages that last don’t reach those heights by chance? Why wait until the road gets rocky to make changes in your marriage? We want to do everything in our power to protect and “bulletproof” our marriage NOW. Nobody gets married planning to get divorced but often we say “I do” and just wing it from there.
To have a thriving marriage in 20+ years, we need to input with intention into our marriage now. Small investments over time will reap large rewards. What can you do this week to #growyourlove ?

PART 2. God’s design is for family. The enemy de

PART 2. God’s design is for family. The enemy despises family and unity.

I remember reading this analogy in a devotion years ago and it painted such a clear picture for me ;

In the past, soldiers used to shoot flaming arrows into battle zones. These were not primarily meant to kill or destroy; they were meant to distract.

The enemy is real and he has studied your tendencies and habits, your deepest fears and weaknesses, and will aim at those areas in particular. He fully intends to sidetrack your attention by setting any number of internal fires ablaze in your life—like insecurity, intimidation, anxiety, worry, or busyness. He wants you to be unfocused while he sneaks up from behind and causes division in your marriage and family.

The enemy sends flaming arrows into your life specifically when you are being called to walk in faith. Those arrows are deliberately intended to disable you from doing the only thing that has the power to extinguish them: walking in faith!

We have had to continually remind ourselves that Faith alone causes fiery arrows to fizzle. What is God asking you to do? He wants us to keep going with this project in faith. Maybe it’s put a big target on us and maybe you’re feeling that way too about areas in your own life. The enemy wants to tear down all the good things that bring God glory.
It’s a fight to stay married, it’s many, many hard intentional choices made every day to keep pursuing and loving your spouse.
We will keep standing our ground here and holding space for thriving marriages because we know that’s God’s plan. We’re with you! #growyourlove

Over the last 4.5 years, there’s been many momen

Over the last 4.5 years, there’s been many moments where we’ve felt attacked. Whilst it’s been overwhelming at times, in retrospect it has encouraged us that the enemy really, really wants to trample on this dream to edify and honor marriage.

Following on from our previous post on prayer and the spiritual battle we face, we wanted to get a little more vulnerable and share some of our experiences.
Marriages are under fire. We absolutely have seen it and each time we take a step forward with Love Salt Light, we usually get hit with something big in our personal lives. Something doesn’t want this to succeed…

Once we had the outline for what Love Salt Light was going to be, we decided to get support behind us and launch it knowing we had friend’s praying for us. So we boldly sent an email to our inner circle to share the idea for the first time. The next morning when we woke up, we found Mark’s work car was broken into overnight and all his tools stolen. That was our livelihood. It really shook us but we didn’t see any connection.

Shortly after, the first night we sat down to start writing content and trial some of the marriage exercises before we brought them to you - I asked Mark a simple question, and suddenly his face dropped and he reluctantly shared with me about his struggles with porn that had been riddling him. That derailed us for awhile as we navigated a plan to heal and move forward. Even though I felt huge doubt and concern about how we could now share advice, God kept nudging us forward.

Months later, the night before we were set to launch onto Instagram - we had our first miscarriage. Broken hearted and shattered, we waited for the fog to lift but we couldn’t stop ourselves from sharing this dream with you all.

Years later we got a fresh prophetic word and encouragement, but that night as we were excitedly making more plans for the future of LSL, more battles emerged in our relationship.

When our third child was born and days later we had the car accident at our home that came with a lot of repercussions, my sister felt that spiritually it was an attack to derail us further as our “territory was enlarging” as our family grew… (continued)

While we were dating, we attended a friend’s wed

While we were dating, we attended a friend’s wedding and the pastor shared how he and his wife had prayed together every day for 30 years. It really stuck out to me and I wanted that for us - to be able to honor that commitment and say the same after decades of marriage. So when we got married, we began that - praying every night together before bed.
Honestly I can say we upheld that for almost a decade but when our third child was born, cosleeping and exhaustion meant our evenings looked very different. At first of course we let the habit fall to the side with every intention of picking it back up, maybe a handful of nights here and there we did but for majority of the last 18months we have not. And I can’t even begin to tell you the challenges we have encountered since then. Some of the significant ones being my mental health declined very quickly with postpartum anxiety and one of our kids received a diagnosis that has come with many challenges and hard days.

Our previous commitment to our prayer life didn’t make us immune to issues - I’m sure the same challenges would have come up even if we were praying regularly but the difference has been, in the past we certainly had felt more equipped, more faithful and had greater peace - rather than now feeling overwhelmed or defeated by things that did come into our life.

Without intentional prayer in our marriage things were snow balling and it was hard to get ahead. It felt like we were carrying all the weight ourselves. We both still remained steadfast in our individual prayer lives but not praying together, in unity, definitely changed something for us. (Continued in comments..)

Today we got to indulge ourselves in a few hours o

Today we got to indulge ourselves in a few hours of bliss. It’s coming up to three years of living on the Gold Coast, which has meant our previous monthly dates are now sometimes six months in-between. Whilst Mark’s beautiful parents are here we’ve been lucky to cram in a few recently. We had a Redballoon voucher needing to be used and whilst we originally wanted to choose a more adventurous date like whale watching or kayaking with dolphins, we also felt we needed to honor where we are at. With three little kids whom seem to hardly sleep a wink, our bodies were in need of some TLC. Some dates call for deep conversations connecting over meals, others for play and laughs but this time called for rest and relaxation. So we literally blissed out in the infrared sauna together and then had an hour float in magnesium pods - complete sensory deprivation. This was a little daunting at first but actually just what weary parents needed to refresh our souls and nervous systems. Whilst we were separate for half the date, we connected afterwards over coffee and a long drive home and debriefed on all we each processed in our float. Definitely a unique date and one that nourished both our mental and physical health 🙏🏼🌞 #growyourlove

Do you consider love languages on birthdays and sp

Do you consider love languages on birthdays and special events? What traditions do you hold around these days in your marriage?

We believe as a husband and wife, we are called to study each other, searching for what our partner needs to make them feel loved and special.

Of course giving gifts are usually a part of these days, but there’s a real opportunity here to speak your love deeply to your spouse through your actions.
Knowing their love language/s is paramount to tailoring these moments in a way that is meaningful to them.

For example, for both of us, one of our primary love languages is words. So carefully selecting a quality card is something we both take a lot of time and care in doing and it will always be filled from front to back. We both treasure that opportunity to communicate what we love about each other. The night before a birthday you’ll always find the other person hiding somewhere in the house, penning a heartfelt card.

My other love language is quality time so when planning a birthday, as long as we’re together for the day then I usually don’t mind what we do. We’re both not ones for parties or big fusses so particularly since having kids, we try to prioritize a date to celebrate birthdays and have that one on one time doing something we don’t usually get to do.

Mark is the king of gift giving - whilst gifts is not one of my love languages to receive, since being together he has made this such a treasured part of our celebrations. There’s never a birthday without some kind of surprise element. One “rule” he’s always had in our marriage is we’re allowed to stretch the truth a bit when a present/surprise is at stake. And he does that very well. I think the key is he listens so well, observes the things I notice and remembers them all for special days. When you feel seen by your spouse, that they have taken note of the things that delight you - it can bring an indescribable joy.
If receiving gifts is something that’s not so important to you but IS important to your spouse, we’d encourage you to practise the art. Gifts usually hold high emotional value and it’s a language of love that you can easily learn (continued in comments…)

A week well spent remote camping and 4WDing throug

A week well spent remote camping and 4WDing through K’gari with special friends. Amazing memories made, some tense moments, remained in love afterwards 😅 hilarious stories to be told and cups all full after time in nature together. Camping is a passion of ours and this definitely reminded us how much we love it and secretly wish we could now live on the road 🧡 #growyourlove Do you have a joint hobby you love to do together???

The beautiful thing about prayer is God hears our

The beautiful thing about prayer is God hears our heart in a way our words can’t express.

That’s why a prayerless marriage is a powerless marriage.

I had been quite hurt by something Mark did. I was moving towards forgiveness but I also felt like I needed an actual act of love/kindness from him to help heal my heart. But I had no idea what I was wanting, I just knew I needed him to DO something.
So I prayed. And asked God to help Mark find the right action that would communicate that feeling to me.
Later I found out, he’d been praying the same thing for himself - that he’d be led to the right action to show his love for me.
And so God answered big time. Mark did something that spoke SO much more to me than words ever could have. God gave him the idea and it was exactly what I needed! I actually laughed when he said he planned this thing as my heart was like YES, that’s what I didn’t know I needed from you.
If we both hadn’t of prayed over the situation, asking for that wisdom that was not from us - we’d probably be going around in hurt circles and taking much longer to move forward from the issue. When you’re not sure what to do in your marriage, if there’s one thing we can encourage you to do - it’s pray!! #growyourlove

A simple little activity to get your week started

A simple little activity to get your week started well. Screenshot or send this to your spouse and plan to have some quality time together tonight. You both need to write a list of 10 simple things that make you feel loved, then you’ll give that list to your love and you’ll each end up with a little cheat sheet of things you can easily weave into their day. Maybe it’s things like having a coffee or breaky made for you before you wake up, a long hug/kiss on return from work, receiving a note of specific encouragement or a small gift of fresh flowers or favorite wine/beer. If you know the love language you mostly love to receive, use this as a guide to brainstorm. Having specifics communicated to each other is a sure way to meet expectations and fill their love tank in a meaningful way. #growyourlove We’d love to know if you give it a go this week and how it makes you both feel!

As I jumped in the car, the radio turned on and a

As I jumped in the car, the radio turned on and a statistic was read out -“Divorce rates are the highest they’ve been in last 2 years than in the last decade.”

As I played w my kids at a playground the other day, I couldn’t help but overhear a group of mum’s listening to their friend talk about leaving her husband.

Hearing these things break my heart. It’s right in front of us. I’m sure sadly, you know someone currently separating or going through big challenges in their marriage.
I have such a fire in my belly to make a change.
However slowly this thing grows, I know there’s a God with a plan backing us up and reaching the right people in His timing. The dreams we have for here are wild.
Publicly or privately we would love you to please share our heart with people in your circles. If they need hope, help or a hand to guide them - We are always here for discussion, chats, prayer. We have been privileged to walk alongside people in their trials who we have and have not met before - praying, sending books, checking in and being a listening ear.
If you’re not sure who to reach out to, we’d love to be there for you and your marriage.

Thanks to the beautiful brave souls who already reached out after posting this yesterday - we’re in your corner!! 🙏🏼

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