Our story
A devotion written every day, and lived before it is sent.
Vividly in Love grew out of Sharlene’s own ministry of writing a marriage devotion every single day. It is still hers. Joshua is the first person to read one.
Six years in
About six years into our marriage we were not seeing eye to eye, and we did not know how to resolve the tension between us. We loved each other. That was never in question. We simply could not find our way back to the same side of the room.
During that season two things happened at once. Sharlene felt strongly led to begin praying intentionally for the marriage. Joshua, who would be the first to admit that reading was never really his thing, felt a new desire to start reading. One of the first books he bought was Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas, and its central question changed how we saw the whole thing: what if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?
Out of that season came something small and unglamorous. We started doing devotion together, regularly. Sixteen years into our marriage, we have never gone a full week without it.
We learned something in the doing of it. It is very difficult to stay angry with someone you are praying for.
Sharlene’s ministry
Writing the devotions has always been Sharlene’s own ministry. She has written one every day for ten years without missing a day, and more than seven hundred people now follow them.
The purpose has always been to inspire struggling couples, without pressuring them to openly share their issues.
Sharlene Findley-Stewart
That is deliberate. The hardest part of a difficult season is often admitting to anyone that there is one. A devotion asks nothing of you. You can read it on your own, at six in the morning, and nobody needs to know why.
Sharlene is a psychologist, a marriage therapist and a Certified Grief Educator, and she writes from both a spiritual and a psychological perspective. It is the same voice either way: careful with people, and honest about how hard marriage can be.
Where Joshua comes in
Every devotion is done at our own table before it goes anywhere. We read it together, pray it together, and say honestly whether it lands. If it does not do anything for the two of us, it is not ready.
So by the time a devotion reaches you, it has already been used by a real marriage on an ordinary morning. That is the whole quality control, and we would not change it.
Joshua also writes a weekly devotion for married men, one husband speaking plainly to another.
Start wherever your marriage is today
The series are written for couples in different seasons. Begin whichever one describes yours, and a new devotion is written every day.
Vividly in Love offers encouragement and practical tools, not counselling. If your marriage is in a season that needs professional support, Sharlene’s counselling practice, Vivid Resolutions, works with adults and couples across the Caribbean.
This is not a crisis service. Emergency contacts vary across the Caribbean. If there is immediate danger, contact your local police or ambulance service. In Trinidad and Tobago: Police 999, Ambulance 811, or 800-COPE (2673) for a mental-health crisis.