Author: Seth

Let’s get real!

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I made a very big commitment to myself when I decided to start this blog.  I was going to quit showing “the Facebook” life and start being real in every area of my life.  I will be honest this scares the crap out of me.  When you have been in sales as long as I have you learn how to be what people expect you to be.  I try as hard as I possibly can to not fall into this trap but I find myself doing it all the time. 

On the surface my life looks pretty dang good and if I am honest and don’t whine, it really is!  However there are certain aspects of my life that are hard to deal with and I am hoping that my advice/way of dealing with them, can help you deal with them as well.

****DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor and I am not saying nor claiming that this is the best way to deal with these situations or that my way will work for you, so please do not take this as such.  What I am speaking about here can be dangerous at certain levels and does not need to be taken lightly.****

For about the last 2 – 3 years I have been dealing with depression.  (I am not going to rate my depression as severe or minor due to the fact that I don’t know your level of depression and I am not going to try and make a comparison) This has been one of the hardest things I have ever dealt with in my life.  Those that know me, know how much of a control freak I am, and with depression you do not control anything except for the steps that you take to defeat it. I have dealt with it by quitting my previous job because I thought that was what was causing it, which it was. I have dealt with it by seeing a counselor so I could talk about it, and although this may help some it did not help me. I have dealt with it with medication, which did help me get through an extremely bad part of it but long term was not my solution. So my next step is the one that I should have taken a long time ago, but have just been doing for the last couple of months, and that is to turn it over to God and share what he is doing with me.

First I will start with what do I mean by this. Well, the simple sarcastic answer is, exactly what I said, I turned it over to God and am letting him handle it.  But that would not make for a very good read or would it give those feeling helpless many steps to follow.  So, this is what I mean:

  • I am setting aside time every day to spend with God: prayer and reading
    • I can tell you from experience the days I fail at this step are the days that I struggle.  It really is amazing to me when I see myself struggling that I can immediately realize that I have skipped this for a day or so.

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  • I am leaving time to study and discuss God’s word with my family
    • I believe that God blesses those that raise their family to respect and glorify him.  It was hard to start but is amazing now.  We read 3 chapters of the Bible every night, underline what sticks out to us or makes an impact on us, discuss it, and then pray over it. This sometimes seems as a burden but I assure you it is one of my favorite parts of the day and is becoming the most valuable time we spend as a family.

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  • I am leaving space for God to do what he wants in my life.
    • This is hard for me because I am a planner but there are many times that we let ourselves get so busy and preoccupied with life that we do not allow God to add anything to our calendars or life.  So I have been intentional with as I plan stuff trying to leave time for God.  This may end up being a time for nothing as that may be what God feels you need but it may also be an opportunity for me to serve, do something I would never have done when I was busy, or just spend some down time resting and being thankful for all the blessings God has provided for me.  Either way it is His time not mine.

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  • I am trying to learn how to say no.
    • This one goes along with the one above very closely.  God does not want you to be a part of everything just to say you are a part of everything.  He also does not want you a part of nothing.  He wants you a part of somethings where your gifts can be used to spread His message in the most effective manner.  This is hard for me cause as a close friend tells me I want to do everything and I want to do it as BIG as possible.  I am coming to terms with the less is more mentality but it is hard!

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  • The last and hardest step for me is I am praying everyday for contentment!
    • I am not a keep up with the Jones’ person but I am an improve everyday person. This is a dangerous personality because you are always looking how to make your situation better; well, sometimes God is saying your situation is pretty dang good right where it is.  I have to get used to this and it is something that the only way I will be content with is through God’s power, so everyday I have to ask him for this.

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Now as I mentioned this is not a DIY checklist and I am not saying this is the way to a cure for depression but it is working pretty good for me and I hope it can add some hope for those of you out there suffering.  There is relief you just have to not give up on finding it.

I am going to be expanding on this more in later blogs but as I said this is the way I am handling it and I will continue with how it is going at a later date.  So, until next time! Thank you

 

Planned Change

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This verse has been driving me absolutely insane over the past few months, for several reasons.

A year and a half ago we made the decision to pick up and move back home, to Texas from Colorado where we lived for almost 4 years.  Shelby was offered an amazing job and then all of the pieces really just started falling into place.  I have always believed that when you have prayed about things and then through your praying and family discussions you come to a consensus everything starts to fall in place; God is working!  Everything really did, that is until we got in place.  From some growing pains with Taylor, to finding a new church, to dealing with the loss of my little brother from another mother made us question if this really was the move God wanted us to make.

We had prayed and prayed and then took steps and prayed for the steps to only be successful if this was the right move and it was. Everything led to this being the right move so why was it so hard now that we made it?

Well, I have my theories but I have also read and read in the bible that God does not always make things easy (man I wish HE would!).  He gave us the ability to make choices and with that power comes a lot of struggles in our life.  I also know that as much as I would like to think that every choice I made during this move and every choice our family made during this move was prayed over, I would be lying to you and to myself.  So, I can pretty much guarantee you that during this process I made choices that were for me and strictly my decision and not right in line with what God wanted me to do.  I am also sure that the struggles that have occurred are strictly due to my decisions and not the plan that God put in place.

The other side of this coin is that we do not remember all the good that has come out of this nearly as much as we remember the bad.  We got to spend some valuable time with Shelby’s Papa prior to him unexpectedly passing away, that we would not have gotten had we still lived in Colorado, our new home is spectacular, Taylor’s doing great in school (even though he doesn’t think so), and of course the fact that it is Oct 21 and I am sitting outside and it is 70 degrees while Colorado is under a freeze warning. The list could seriously go on and on.  It truly is so hard for us to think about the good things even close to as much as we think about the bad.

So with all that said, I do believe we are exactly where God wants us to be, for now, but this verse has still been driving me nuts.  With the endless choices we can make in our life God already has it planned out from beginning to end!!  He had it planned out before we were ever conceived. How amazing is our God!?! This verse should never scare you but should always comfort you. No matter where you go or the choices you make as long as the most important choice, accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior, has been made; you may trip, fall, crash, burn, or even all out be a crash test dummy but when you turn back to your heart He will be there and His plan for you will be waiting!! That my friends is an absolute amazing promise!!!

Until next time!

Hello world!

We are all very new, meaning never have done it before, to the blogging world; so please don’t be to harsh on our critique ;-).  This year has been quite the adventure for the Flowers family.  We have had lots of events occur that make you look and ask the question; what is important to me.  We all decided for us it is two things, in this order; God and family!

Due to this decision we have made some very drastic changes in our life. I will leave it up to each person to write about their own changes but I will put the ones our family have made here.

We decided to be intentional about our time as a family.  We have always been a family that loved spending time together but we found ourselves spending more and more time watching tv, reading, playing legos, or doing many other things as individuals rather than spending time together. Don’t get me wrong, we all still have our individual time but we are making every effort to be more intentional about our time together.  Every night (well every night we don’t forget or get to the point one of us is falling asleep) we do our Power of 3* reading together as a family and discuss what really reached out to us or questions we may have had through the reading. We also bought a travel trailer to get out and do some glamping**.  We all love the outdoors but do not like “roughing it” so in order to be able to accomplish getting outdoors more often we bought a camper.  We love it and it has certainly allowed us to go out and hike with the dogs and see places we would never see otherwise.  We have also started getting out by our pool more and enjoy the things we already have.

These changes are going to be followed by other sacrifices that are still in negotiation ;-)!  Seth giving up cable (really the only one under negotiation), the family giving up our season tickets to the Longhorns, having nightly dinners (when we don’t have something else going on), and beginning some fun family projects that will take the place of current individual activities.

Our ultimate goals with our new adventures are:

  • Have a family and home culture that is built around loving and learning how amazing our God is!
  • Spending more time doing things that we would look back on and say I wish we had done that.
  • Grow as a family together and share that with anyone who takes the time to read this.
  • Share how God affects our lives throughout our journeys/lives and how He could affect yours as well!

I will be sharing as often as possible and hope this one was not so awful that it scares people off.

*Something Highpoint Church in Aurora, CO does as a church.  Reading 3 chapters of the bible every day/night.  You will read through the entire bible every 14 months.

**The art of glamorous camping; i.e. air conditioning, bathroom, kitchen, and most importantly bed.