The Birth of Vessels & Flowers, by Sally

Years ago I put on a little home brewed friends seminar.  We had just just moved to Coshocton and had trouble finding a place to rent.  A local real estate agent was helping us find a place.  There was nothing available at the time so she made the arrangements for us to rent a lovely large home with five bedrooms and three baths for a few months until we could get into something more suitable for us.

The home was so lovely and large so I planned a weekend seminar for my friends from Fremont and Lima and for my new friends in Coshocton.  It was fun because I was able to fashion a weekend that was what I had always wanted for a women's seminar.  I planned times for meetings in our living room that were fun and interesting.  I had a few missionary friends that shared their ministries to us.  Brenda shared about temperaments.  I shared about spiritual gifts.  We went to a tourist town, Roscoe Village, on Saturday afternoon to SHOP.  We had so much fun over the weekend.

I think it was on Saturday evening we were having coffee and snacks around our large dining room table and we all got into a conversation about our temperaments and how we function with each other.  Brenda and I had fun talking about these subjects and someone spoke up and said, "You two should write a book about this."  Of course I pulled back, but Brenda said, "When do we start!"  And that is how the first seed about Vessels and Flowers got planted.

Awhile later I was attending a women's seminar.  The accommodations were very nice and the women who put it on did a great job.  The speaker was a known author.  Her subject was about our different temperaments.  However, I went home so FRUSTRATED.  She described the temperaments as certain kinds of people.  I had trouble figuring out which one I was.  Another problem was the descriptive word of that temperament really didn't mean anything.  It was nothing that I could picture and get a grip on who I was.  She spoke around the subject, but made no attempt to come to a conclusion of now that you know which temperament you are, how does that help you at all.  At the end of the seminar they asked for anyone in the audience to share.  Several women got up and some even broke down crying.  They were so relieved to find out what temperament they were, but they were so frustrated that now how does that solve any problem in their lives.

After that seminar I went home and "mulled" for awhile.  I finally called Brenda and we discussed how we just had to do something about this.  We saw how God had created us with a specific temperament and a specific way to function and finding out what that was could help us to understand ourselves, others, and God better.  The discovery of knowing that would help us to be free in many areas of our lives.

We saw the temperament as a base of who we are and the function as something put inside of that base.  We talked about all kinds of pictures of that.  One I remember is a picture of some kind of stuffed animal with something else in their arms.  Aren't you glad we didn't use that one.  But the one the Lord kept putting on our hearts was a picture of a vessel and something put into that vessel.  A picture of that would describe who you are.

And that, dear friends, is how Vessels & Flowers was born.

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