Submit your questions to MailBox Monday.

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AMBER LIA is a former high school English teacher, Amber is a work-at-home mom of four little boys ranging from 2 to 12. She is the best-selling co-author of Triggers: Exchanging Parents’ Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses and Parenting Scripts: When What You’re Saying Isn’t Working, Say Something New. She and her husband, Guy own Storehouse Media Group, a faith-friendly and family-friendly TV and Film production company in Los Angeles, CA. Their book, Marriage Triggers, will be available in February 2020. When she’s not building sand castles with her boys on the beach, or searching for Nerf darts all over her house, you can find Amber writing to encourage families on her blog MotherOfKnights.com.

GUY LIA is a graduate of Pepperdine University, Guy Lia is a former TV, Feature Film, and VFX Development & Production Executive. Guy has worked on such TV shows as Breaking Bad, Rules of Engagement, Damages, and films such as Dante’s Peak and For Love of the Game, and his apartment became the default production office for Napoleon Dynamite! Guy currently runs Storehouse Media Group, a faith and family-friendly TV and Film Production Company alongside his business partner and wife, Amber Lia. Guy currently resides in Los Angeles, CA with his beautiful wife of almost 14 years and is the proud father of 4 energetic and wonderful sons – he is excited to finally be building his own future Rugby Team-in-training! Guy and Amber’s first book together, Marriage Triggers, will be available in February 2020! 

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TRANSCRIPTION:

This podcast is brought to you by our friends at Dual Credit at Home.

Hey, everybody. This is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the Heidi St. John Podcast. Today is Friday, February 28. This is episode number 891. It is Meet my Friend Friday and I got some new friends on the show with me today and we’re going to talk about all things marriage and you guys are going to love the,. Amber and Guy Lia are on the show with me today and we’re going to be talking about their new book, “Marriage Triggers, Exchanging Spouse’s Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses.” Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged.

So, thanks for tuning in today everybody. Really appreciate you guys sharing the podcast and hanging out with me. I am in Nashville right now for the Teach Them Diligently Conference. If you’re anywhere in the area, I want to encourage you to come on out. I believe Tim Tebow opens up tomorrow morning. So, this is a great time for you guys to come down and I will be co-hosting a Mom’s Night Out tomorrow night with Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth and we’ve got lots of room left for you. So, come on out, Teach Them Diligently in Nashville, Tennessee.

Also, I would introduce you guys to a brand new sponsor here at the podcast, Dual Credit at Home. And this is going to be an awesome thing for those of you who are homeschooling high schoolers because your teens can earn dual credit by taking college level exams like the CLEP on subjects that they’re already studying in high school. The Muldrow family at Dual Credit at Home has saved over $300,000 doing this method and they’ve written a free ebook on how families can do it too. You guys can download your copy at DualCreditAtHome.com/Heidi. It’s an easy read and full of information. Check it out. I’ll link back to it in the show notes today.

All right. Without further ado, I want to introduce my guests to you today. I’m really excited to have Amber and Guy on the podcast with me today. They are the authors of a brand new book, “Marriage Triggers, Exchanging Spouse’s Angry Actions for Gentle Biblical Responses” and I happen to be holding a copy of it in my hand. I think it’s going to be fantastic for every single one of you who is married because we all know marriage is a thing, right? We’ve talked about this a million times here at the podcast and I think most of us know that our marriages have room for improvement and sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why a relationship is suffering and often everyday triggers are the culprit. Maybe the little things that we don’t know how to address or maybe we’ve been addressing them incorrectly and so we wind up angry and frustrated with no hope of change.

So, if you’re wondering how to break out of a cycle of reactionary outbursts or maybe the cold shoulder treatment or maybe some of y’all are slamming the dishwasher shut on the regular, mm-hmm, you’re going to be stoked today because Amber and Guy are here to talk about marriage triggers. They’ve been married for 14, almost 15 years, and they are shepherding four young men at home. Amber and Guy, welcome to the podcast.

[Amber] Thank you, Heidi.

[Guy] Yeah. Thank you so much.

[Amber] We’ve been looking forward to this. We’re so glad to talk with you and share with your listeners.

[Guy] Absolutely.

[Heidi] Well, I’m thrilled that you guys are here. I love this idea because what you’ve done is you’ve basically taken something that we all know exists, which everybody has a trigger, right? Everybody’s got a point in which they’re like, “Dude, if you say that one more time” and I know what my husband’s triggers are, right? And he knows what mine are, but then there’s some that we’re like, you can’t necessarily put your finger on it. Why did you guys decide to write this book?

[Amber] Well, we didn’t really want to write this book necessarily because it’s a challenge to share your own personal journey, especially if you had struggles and challenges, pretty significant ones like Guy and I have had during certain seasons of our marriage, but when my co-author Wendy Speak and I wrote a Parenting Triggers book a few years ago now and everywhere I went with speaking engagements, I’m talking with readers, even getting letters from people on a regular basis, they would say, “Parenting Triggers, it really transformed me into a more gentle biblical parent. Radically helped me take control of my angry reaction so I could have better responses with my kids. And a lot of it has been able to help me in my marriage relationship too, but I really wish there was something a little bit more specific that I could really apply to my marriage.”

And so it was really a result of hearing that for several years and praying about it before we decided, yeah, this is a needed resource. People just needed something very concrete and super rooted in scripture in order to handle these everyday things that Guy and I felt weren’t addressed very often. And so, that’s how the book was born.

[Guy] And we also felt it was really important to have both perspectives, both from Amber and I individually because we see things so very differently. A lot of times in marriage, and it’s so important to be able to understand where we’re both coming from and where those triggers are coming from, if they’re external triggers or if they’re internal triggers, that might be things that are rooted from our childhood or from the way our parents brought us up or things that we’ve experienced. So, it’s so important to have both perspectives involved in this.

[Heidi] Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And you guys, since you’ve written the book on Marriage Triggers that you’re putting yourself into a little bit of a marriage authority category, so I want to know a little bit about you guys and in terms of your own marriage, when did you guys meet? Tell us a little bit about yourselves as we sort of introduce audiences to where you got this passion for encouraging other people. I love that you said Amber, I love that you said that it’s rooted in scripture, that the answers that you give are rooted in scripture because heavens knows we don’t need any worldly wisdom anymore. It’s not working for us. We got to get back to God’s word. 

[Amber] He’s the best relationship expert out there, right? I mean truly, in all reverence, he has all the answers and so that’s where we want to get every single piece of wisdom that we have is going to come from him ultimately. So, well Guy and I, we met, do you want to tell them?

[Guy] Yeah, sure.

[Amber] We had to take a little bit to tell you this, but we’ll tell.

[Guy] It’s Always funny when this question comes up, but yes. We just-

[Heidi] This is what I love though. Come on, hit me. Hit me.

[Guy] So, we met in a jacuzzi in Mammoth on a ski trip with our singles group.

[Amber] Yes.

[Guy] It was like probably a group of about 300 people, two jacuzzis next to each other that were filled with probably 40 people in each jacuzzi and I’m sitting there with a bunch of my buddies and Amber and her girlfriend comes strolling in, walking into the pool and immediately a hush came over the crowd and my eyes turned to Amber and it was like that moment.

[Amber] They were pure eyes, but he noticed me. But we did. It sounds very saucy, but it was a church group. We have to say. We did meet in a hot tub, but it was on a singles church group in the mountains skiing. And that’s where it all started. I know.

[Guy] Ironically enough though, it took us a year after that for us to actually come together. We both were…

[Amber] Yeah. We weren’t hanging out together.

[Guy] Well, we both were in the midst of our own things going on in our lives. My career was exploding. Amber was in a relationship that she was kind of coming out of and so it just took us a year to actually finally come together. And during that time we had kept our eyes on each other, I think. And when it finally happened, it was…

[Amber] It was quick.

[Guy] It was quick and it was so God ordained. It was just so obvious that we were being brought together.

[Amber] And then it all fell apart. And then we got married and had a honeymoon and then it all fell apart.

[Heidi] Oh yeah.

[Amber] Yeah. But by God’s grace, here we are having written a marriage book together. So, we hope that that in and of itself gives people who might be hurting in their own relationships or even just feeling like you’re in a cycle of the mundane and know that your marriage could be better. Hopefully, our story will give people some hope.

[Heidi] Yeah. And speaking of your story, can you guys talk about one of the triggers that most resonated with each of you during the writing of the book? Because I know, as an author, I’ve written, I don’t know, seven or eight books and it seems like if you decide to write about marriage, look out because your marriage is going to get attacked. You decided to write about parenting, then you know, forget about it. You’re going to have a rough year of parenting for the year that you’re writing the book. I can only imagine that that had to have happened with you on one level or another. So, what’s one trigger that resonated with you guys during the writing of the book where you were like, “Oh yeah, that’s totally us.”

[Amber] Well, I think that one of the things that we heard over and over again from many couples, that was definitely one of our biggest issues was this idea of expectations and going into a marriage for me, I had very, and I didn’t realize this at the time until I started getting truly triggered and reacting to the situations in our own marriage, but I had very specific expectations of what I thought Guy was supposed to do, and be, I thought he was supposed to be a spiritual leader in the way that I thought that should look like.

And really, the imagination of what I thought his spiritual leadership should look like even in our marriage versus what his personality was and his unique relationship with the Lord were two very different things. And so, that was a challenge for me. I had to recognize that his style was going to be different from mine and I needed to actually let him lead our family spiritually in a way that suited him. He was not going to do a long theological explanation of Deuteronomy at the dinner table every night, but he sure was going to talk about… And that was my background. I went to Bible schools. I love to study and teach the Bible. So, that’s kind of my thing. But that’s not my husband.

[Guy] Yeah, that was the big difference because I have to admit, very early on in our relationship and our marriage, I began to feel less than, because Amber, she just has grown up in the church and has such an incredible depth of knowledge of scripture and it’s on her heart and it really is amazing. And for me, I also grew up in the church, but I wasn’t surrounded by my faith as much as she was until I got into late into high school and into college when I really discovered my own faith and started really pursuing that on my own.

So, in marriage I always felt like I couldn’t give wisdom to Amber that she didn’t already know. And I felt less than in sitting down and leading our children through Bible studies, but I did have my own way and it was when I’m connecting with my boys and we’re out on a hike and I can bring in biblical principles that I see that I can relate to them in a way that I think that they’re going to really connect with and remember, that was kind of a style that I had. And I remember it was really difficult for us because it was a complaint that Amber always had that I wasn’t leading our kids at the dinner table and I wasn’t getting them to memorize scripture and these kinds of things.

[Heidi] We get this question at the podcast all the time. I mean, I hear from people, from moms especially, who are just like, my husband’s not leading and not the spiritual leader in our home. And you wind up with these guys that are bottling up their feelings of insecurity or they’re like, “Hey, that wasn’t actually me.” And then you’ve got a nagging wife, then you end up with passive aggressive behavior and you end up with all this stuff. And so I love that you’re, I love that you’re talking about this because I think the net result, I’m hoping, is you’re going to set some people free today because it doesn’t have to look like what Amber just said. It doesn’t have to look like father opening your Bible to Deuteronomy, we’re going to sit around. It doesn’t have to look like that and I want to know from you Guy, does it help when your wife nags you about it?

[Guy] We say yes on both things. I think I’ll let Amber talk a little bit on that last part. Absolutely. Amber is such an amazing example to me of when scripture is on your heart and that is just something that has been really wonderful in my own faith that’s really caused me to draw closer to her, it’s caused me to draw closer to my own faith and that’s been really wonderful, but I think my perspective has helped Amber as well.

[Amber] Well, yeah. I mean, it doesn’t help when I nag him. He obviously…

[Heidi] Right.

[Amber] That not helpful, but he sees that and values my strengths and I get to see and value his strengths. And so what we always say is, look, if you as the wife have a different type of spiritual approach, if you love memorizing scripture and that’s your jam and you’re good at helping your kids learn scripture, that happened to be something that was more my strength and yet, I was wanting my husband to do it because I had this kind of cultural or what I like to call churchical idea that it would be his job. And it really wasn’t necessarily true. And so, when I was able to release my expectation that he should be teaching them how to memorize scripture and I was like, look, this is my strength. I like to do it. Praise the Lord that there’s one of us that does. And so let me do that.

Meanwhile, the kids are connecting with Guy on a really personal level. He’s speaking into when they come home from school in tears because of something, or we’re homeschooling, which we’ve done as well, and there’s something that they’re just really struggling with, some kind of pressure or something a friend said to them, Guy is able to speak to their hearts in a way that’s very different from me that really can spiritually point them to Jesus and their attitudes that is his strength. So, I think it’s important to kind of evaluate what your expectations are, especially for spiritual leadership and then celebrate each other’s strengths instead of allowing them to be your triggers.

[Heidi] Yeah, that’s so good. And you’re learning things as you go along too. I love that one of the highlights, it seems to me anyways, as I’m listening to you guys talk and you’ve been looking at the book, is you’re saying, “Hey, if you’re frustrated right now, don’t give up. It’s worth it to work through this stuff and try to figure out how we got here and how can we move beyond it?” I’m assuming you guys talked to lots of couples when you wrote the book. What were some common triggers that you found many couples were dealing with in their own marriages?

[Guy] Well, one thing that I’ll say is in doing the research and reaching out to, we literally reached out to hundreds and hundreds of friends, both Amber separately from me as well as us together and readers. Yeah.

[Amber] Just people that weren’t even friends that we got a lot of feedback.

[Guy] And one thing that was really amazing is Amber would come back and share with me how she got 50, 60, 70 responses and all these different things and women were just outlining all of these triggers and different things that were going on in their marriages and I’d be like, I got two emails.

[Amber] From the men.

[Guy] From the guys. And I’m reaching out to hundreds of guys and I was like, you know that right there I think for me is an example of one of the problems is that women are so much more in tuned and engaged generally with their marriages as an organic thing that has to kind of continually be worked on. And I think a lot of guys tend to not engage as much and talk about it as much. And so that that comes down to communication. And I realized that in order for me to get guys to engage on this, I’m going to have to share more of my own perspective and encourage communication and encourage preparation so that when a trigger hits, you’re prepared to deal with it in a way that is biblical and that is going to honor your wife as well as your relationship with the Lord rather than kind of just waiting for something to happen and then just reacting to it. So, that was a real kind of stark thing for us to realize right there on the research part of our experience.

[Amber] And really one of the practical ways that we have seen husbands and wives begin to share more equally in the effort to learn to respond to one another as opposed to reacting in anger, is that we recommend in order to start opening up communication a little bit more is, and Guy and I did this early on and now it’s even easier because we’ve gotten into the habit of doing it, we look forward to doing this, but we tell people set aside time to have a talk every month, once a month for sure as a starting point, but even every couple of weeks where it doesn’t have to be a lengthy time, but you agree, hey, you know what? We want to improve our marriage. We’re a team. Let’s just open up an hour or two. If it’s coffee on a Saturday morning where you have a sitter come or it’s Friday nights after the kids go to bed or whatever works for you.

It doesn’t have to be a big long drawn out thing, but where you come together and you say, what’s the one area that we tend to be triggered by the most? Is it when we talk about finances? Is it because we’re not parenting on the same page? Is it because one of us is just really exhausted right now and we need to reevaluate our schedules? What is that one thing that tends to be the biggest issue where you see yourselves reacting and being triggered toward anger and frustration over and over again and then come to that time where you’ve agreed, this is our time to kind of talk about a trigger or two and we have to be willing in that time to say, “Okay Guy, I want to as your wife, because I love you and I want our marriage to improve. I want to live life to the full like God says he gave us to do. So, tell me what is one thing that’s a trigger for you?”

And then I have to be willing, I’ve agreed during that time of communication to really listen, to not be defensive and just to say, “Okay, I hear you. This is what you said the trigger is. I hear you saying that and let’s think of something that I could do or that we can do that will be a better response when that trigger comes up.” And then make a plan and then give yourselves grace and some time to implement and work on that one trigger. Because some of us will read this book and we’ll say “31 triggers. Yep, I’ve got them all. I’m overwhelmed. Where do I even begin?” So, we think that just a good approach and if a wife says to her husband, “Hey, I really love you and I want our marriage to be even better, would you have coffee with me every Sunday afternoon just for an hour and we can talk about some things.”

And you can even approach it, if a spouse is reluctant, you don’t even have to target something that they trigger in you, you could even just out of a place of humility and love say, “I think that my tone of voice sets you off sometimes. I sense that that’s a trigger for you. I want to improve in that. Let’s talk about it. What can I do to alleviate that trigger and to make it better? And just start there in humility and I think that any spouse is going to be open and willing to talk with you and to try to make improvements when you come from a place of humility and love, which is really the purpose of our lives is to love God and to love others and to have that sense of humility and grace toward one another.

[Heidi] Yeah, that’s right. I love that you’re talking about a style in which we communicate with each other because we can wound each other I think, unintentionally when we’re not tender, when we bring up a topic that we know might be sensitive, you’re tiptoeing into things. I can think, Jay and I had been married for 30 years and I think right around our 15th anniversary we were having, it seems like we were having kids every other year and the pressures of work were enormous and oh yeah and all the things that were going on and I remember my husband just one day, he wanted to go out for coffee with me.

And as we sat across the table from each other, I’m looking at this man who I love more than life itself and he started to say something about how he missed me and because I was waiting for him to be, because on myself, I was thinking, oh there’s going to be one more thing I’m not doing right. It’s going to be one more thing, one more negative in the negative corner and Jay’s not even a negative guy, but I was already playing these tapes in my head. And so it didn’t take much for me. I’m like captain anxiety, right? Able to leap to the worst conclusion in a single bound. So, I didn’t even really let him finish. I was just sort of, “Oh, so you’re upset.” And in that season we learned to be very, very careful in the way that we talk to each other.

So, in other words, if I know now, let’s say, so one of the triggers for him early on, especially in our marriage because I just didn’t get it, was he felt like we weren’t having sex enough. He just felt like I didn’t care about it, I could sort of take it or leave it, which is kind of true to a certain degree. And so at one point, I remember just, I felt like I need to bring this up to him because I want him to know I love him and I want him to know I actually care about it. So, I tiptoed into it and I said, “So, hey Babe, how would you rate our sex life on say a scale eight to nine?” It was my way of opening the door to the conversation while at the same time saying, please be tender with me. And that was a good lesson for both of us. Is this, I think this is sort of the direction that you’re going. You’re saying let’s talk about this stuff, but be tender with each other.

[Amber] Absolutely. Yeah.

[Guy] Yeah. One of the other chapters actually is when you’re no longer friends. And I found this to be a really important one because just like you mentioned in the beginning of your marriage, you felt like you were having kids every year and you were just, you were so busy. And I felt that same pressure. I felt like Amber and I went from marriage to pregnant within three months and I felt like we didn’t have a chance to establish our friendship before we were suddenly parents and having to deal with the thought of what is that going to mean and getting the house ready and all these things. So for me, I felt like I lost our friendship in many ways. And so, I remember one night we had had an argument and we had kind of fixed things and I told Amber, I said, “I just want you to know that I love you Honey.”

And she very softly said, “I know you do. I just hope that you like me.” And it was like a shock to my system because I was like, wow, I never thought of it that way. And so, I know that there are steps that we have to take in marriage, even though the kids are taking up so much of our time, our marriage relationship and our friendship is a foundation that our children are watching. And it’s a foundation that if we don’t give that to our children, they are going to grow up without a foundation for friendship for their own marriages. And that is going to be something that is going to cause their house to fall.

So, Amber and I knew that we just had to establish that. And whether that be making purposeful dates every once in a while or believing the best about each other even in the midst of arguments, we had to always remember there’s a reason she’s saying this. I know she loves me, I know she likes me and I have to work through whatever this is. But take that off the shelf, the fact that she doesn’t love me. I mean, that’s not true. So, believe the best and that was something I had to continue to remind myself. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest things that we have worked on is our friendship that has turned so many of these triggers around and allowed us to deal on a whole different level.

[Amber] Yeah. Sometimes we just need to lighten up a little bit. I’m not saying that we aren’t talking to people who maybe have some very serious deeper wounds or issues or circumstances in their marriages that are hard to navigate. And we say in the book that God doesn’t want us to make light of our circumstances, but he wants us to see our circumstances through His light. And so, when we start viewing our spouse through the light of God’s loving kindness and giving them the benefit of the doubt and just being a little bit more intentional to establish our friendship and to believe the best about one another, to let God heal our wounds and to really make strides of intentional things we can do to communicate and love our spouse as well. That goes a long way in protecting us from our triggers.

[Heidi] Yeah, and I know that there are a lot of people listening to this right now who are thinking to themselves, man, that’s totally me. We’ve got these issues. Maybe, you guys know what it’s like when you don’t deal with something and then it just, it kind of heaps on over time and then pretty soon everything your spouse does is bothering you, right? They look at you the wrong way, it bothers you. They don’t put the spoon in the dishwasher, it bothers you and you’ve kind of let these things go too long. Can you guys just for a minute, just talk to the husband or the wife who’s listening to this and they’re saying, you know what? I feel like I’m triggered by literally everything right now. Where does that couple start?

[Amber] Our triggers, they’re either going to serve to be, these different issues that are triggers, they’re either going to be triggers that cause a lot of conflict in our marriage or they can be eventually used as testimonies of what God can do in us. So, I want my marriage to be a testimony, not a trigger. And when there’s been a pattern, a repeated cycle of hurt of issues that we can’t even sometimes pinpoint, like you suggested at the beginning, Heidi, we tend to have an approach and an attitude toward our spouses that feels very wounded, that can feel very negative. And so, there’s a verse that we think is really, really key for people who really have had this long history and repetition of their triggers. And one of the things that we want to encourage people is, is you don’t have to fix it all today.

You don’t have to figure this out completely right now, but let’s make a baby step in the right direction. And one of the verses that we focus on is Ephesians 4:29 and verses 31 through 32. It says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you.” And we know that we can’t please everybody all the time, but when we focus on pleasing the Lord, blessings follow.

: And so, I can’t control what my husband does or doesn’t do, he can’t control what I do and don’t do, but even his sin does not allow me to be justified in my own sin. And what God’s calling me to do, even if there’s been a long lineage of triggers and I feel rather broken and bruised from it, I want to focus on me. What am I doing that has been unwholesome talk or unwholesome thinking about my spouse? What tapes do I need to silence in my head and what do I need to do to focus on what is true and pure and good and lovely and then what’s a specific action or thing I can say or stop saying that’s going to show that I love my spouse and want to change myself. And when one of us begins to be transformed that way and to love our spouse well as God intended, to give a lot of grace and understanding, that is going to have an impact on our spouse much of the time.

And that is really, I think, the starting point is examining ourselves. We don’t want to address these triggers and just fix all the triggers so we don’t have to change. This is really about our own personal growth between us and the Lord and then trusting that he’s going to strengthen our marriage as a result.

[Heidi] Yeah, that’s right. And honestly, once we, I love that you’re directing each of us to look in the mirror at our own selves because once we do that, it shifts the focus. It’s so easy for me to look at my husband and say, if he would only do this or if he would only do that instead of looking in the mirror and saying, “Lord, please change me. Change me, soften my heart.” And that is always, you can’t go wrong, it’s always a good place to start.

One of the things I loved about “Marriage Triggers” is … there’s 31 right? Pretty common issues that we all I think can relate to at one season or another inside our marriages. Poor communication. We already talked about busy schedules, lack of spiritual leadership, that kind of stuff. But what I really love is that you really are taking readers to the Bible, which is the focal point of everything we do here at the podcast and at the end of these chapters you’re including a prayer guide, right? To help readers really put into words how they’re feeling and then pray about them. Why did you guys decide to do that and what are you hoping, somebody is thinking, “I wonder if I should get this book?” How is that going to put them on the right path toward being able to deal with these marriage triggers in a way that heals instead of hurts?

[Guy] Yeah. We, again, in our research, I think we found a lot of people don’t often know what to say when they’re praying. They don’t know specifically what to pray for and we just want to offer up some simple language that addresses each chapter specifically that they can use as a guide or a starting point for their own prayer time. Just as a way to get them into it and to say the words that we just got done discussing and allow that to just kind of pour into their hearts and hopefully, those are the kinds of words that will just help them shift their thinking and get them off in the right direction that they desire to be and if you’re reading this book, it’s because you feel that there are some areas that you want to improve. So, we’re just offering a way for them to jumpstart that.

[Amber] Yeah. And really for us foundationally our marriage being turned around, started with prayer and very simple but honest prayer. Lord, this isn’t working. We cannot do this on our own. We need your help. And it was often, Lord, I’m about to say the wrong thing. Please put a guard over my mouth, help me to speak kindly. Help me to say something that’s going to benefit and make this situation better not worse. Just very simple, but honest prayers and often rooted in scripture. And so, we felt like including that at the end of every chapter was really going to be a game changer, I think, for a lot of people.

[Heidi] Yeah, I agree. Well, you guys, I can’t believe it. We’re already out of time, but before we check out today, I just wanted to let everybody know they can find you guys online, right? And you had said earlier, if they just Google your names, that’s probably a really good way to do it because y’all are everywhere. You’re doing all kinds of stuff. But Amber, you’ve got a website MotherOfKnights.com, because you’re raising all these four young men and we’re going to have link back to all things Amber and Guy Lia in the show notes today and I just wanted to say thank you guys for really caring about marriages enough to step out and lead the way and say, “Hey, you guys can make this better. God can help you and there’s healing.” I really appreciate you coming on the show today.

[Amber] Oh, thanks Heidi. We appreciate it. And just one other thing too that might be of interest to your listeners. We actually have an online book club that’s starting on March 15th to go through marriage triggers with us. Just one chapter a day each weekday starting March 15th and they can go to my website to find the link to sign up for that and to join that Facebook group and that’s, yeah, just www.motherofknights.com.

[Guy] Thank you so much.

[Amber] Thanks for having us.

[Heidi] Thanks you guys. You guys, Marriage Triggers includes the guided prayer at the end of each chapter and you guys are going to love it. They’re going to be talking about how to deal with your mother-in-law and your father-in-law, moment of silence, your roles at home, sex, personality differences, exhaustion, all the things. I love the heart of this young couple and I know you guys are going to be encouraged. You can check it out and get more information today in the show notes at heidistjohn.com/podcast.

Thanks for listening today everybody. We really appreciate you leaving reviews for the podcast over at iTunes. You guys know this is my speaking season and I am in Nashville right now, but next weekend I will be in Peoria, Illinois for the Hearts 2 conference with my friend Dr. Kathy Cook and after that Faith That Speaks coming to Los Angeles. I hope you guys will come out and say hello. Thanks for listening today everybody. Have a great day and I’ll see you back here on Monday.

Write to Heidi
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

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