Love Salt Light

Intentionally growing in love.

Intentionally growing in love

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Four years ago we were asked to run a marriage sem

Four years ago we were asked to run a marriage seminar for couples in their early years of marriage, with a focus on things we had learnt from those first few years of our own marriage.

We felt that it would be valuable to share here too so we’re going to post a mini series on Choices over the coming weeks. We’ll be looking at comparing intentional choice v. the easy option.

You can’t recreate these early years, so we want to encourage you to make them count!! You’re in them now! Foundations are paramount - you are establishing the culture of your home – the first 5-10 years is the crucial period of building a firm foundation together that is going have a significant influence over the tone of your marriage. This is usually where you have the time and resources to focus purely on the two of you - so invest your best! (Oh the possibilities when you’re double income no kids!!) Of course don’t write yourself off if you’re not in the first few years of your marriage anymore, if you think you’ve missed the boat - you can change the course of your marriage by what you implement going forward. But let’s choose to sow into our relationship so not only us, but our future families, reap the rewards down the track.

We’re going to share on the six topics below and provide some practical ways to implement them and what they have looked like for us.

Choose foundations over fun

Choose communication over couch potatoes

Choose to compliment over criticize

Choose boundaries over freedom

Choose love over lust

Choose to forgive over focus

Celebrated 11 years of marriage last week with a c

Celebrated 11 years of marriage last week with a camping getaway with our team. If we couldn’t go away alone, make the most of doing what we love together. #growyourlove #lovers #youandiarequitetheteam

I read this the other day and it really made sense

I read this the other day and it really made sense to me, maybe you’ve found it to be true too. It was essentially saying the harmful traits we can sometimes display are usually the opposite of our own love language.

Not asking for help (acts of service)
Isolating (quality time)
Avoidance (physical touch)
Impulsive shopping (gift giving)
Going silent (words of affirmation)

We can be so aware of what makes us feel loved but maybe you haven’t really thought about how you are subconsciously communicating your own needs by how you are behaving towards your spouse or vice versa. Let’s consider some honest healthy communication and openly discussing our needs instead of assuming they will do the things you’re hoping for.
Little food for thought for your weekend 💛 #growyourlove

This is the first year in 8 years that we aren’t

This is the first year in 8 years that we aren’t in the pregnant or breastfeeding season. So we are trying to get back into all our old habits of prioritizing time for us with weekly home dates and monthly dates out - so this little gem couldn’t have landed in our hands at a better time. All the hard work has been done for us by the wonderful husband and wife duo at @dad_certified and we simply have to draw a card, do a little planning and we’ll have ourselves a memorable date night. Without family around, the home dates are going to be so SO valuable for us as it will allow us to be intentional with our connection without using ‘no easy babysitting’ as an excuse. We’re really looking forward to filling our journal up over the year and reaping all the rewards 🧡 never too late to start new habits for the year, so if you’re needing some new motivation on dating your spouse, The Date Night Diary could be just what you’re looking for #growyourlove #ad

Merry Christmas everyone ❤️ our 15th one toget

Merry Christmas everyone ❤️ our 15th one together and we’re now at the stage of marriage where we say we aren’t doing presents for each other but we of course both buy them anyway. A long way from our first Christmas where we both went to extreme lengths to surprise each other with Kings of Leon tickets haha! We had our first solo Christmas and it was weirdly wonderful compared to our usual busy day. Now we’re on the road to Melb for some family time 👋🏻 looking forward to showing up here with more intention in 2023. Much love x

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…)

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