I haven’t written on here for a long time but noticed there has been an influx of views from several different countries. So since God had me start this blog several years ago, I’m going to post what I sent out on my prayer email for Kids Biblical Counseling.
Hello Friends,
I am writing this while I’m on my way home from Pawleys Island, SC. We had a week of beach and ocean and relaxing and I was sad to leave it all!
I have had something on my mind to send out but I had chosen to wait. A few weeks ago after the school/church shooting in Minneapolis, I found myself fighting tears as I watched children coming out looking very traumatized. As I watched the coverage I strongly sensed the spiritual battle going on. I started praying over the church/school/parents/kids. I told someone, “This is demonic.” We can say “that was evil” but there is much deeper meaning when you call it “demonic.” Yes, I know it makes Christian’s feel uncomfortable but I got over it when I saw newspaper headlines the next day that said “DEMONIC.” Finally!! The world sees it and recognizes it….im looking forward to when more followers of Jesus speak up about it.
Fast forward to the assasination of Charlie Kirk and now you hear news reporters saying the word “demonic” or “spiritual battle.” People feel it and see it playing out right before our eyes. What are followers of Jesus doing about it? What is the church as a whole doing about it? Are we still going to say that “the demonic is way back here” because it’s not. It’s very much in front of us and all around us. I’m looking forward to when there is an uprising, which is starting, of true followers of Jesus who put on the full armor of God that we all know about, and go to battle for those who need rescued from the grips of hell. There is nothing better than that!
I had never watched Charlie Kirk. I knew of him but I didn’t follow him because I had no idea what he was out doing. Such a horrific scene.
Then I watched Erika Kirk….incredible. She pretty much declared holy war on the enemy and the world has responded. God is using that incredible woman to do great things and I am excited to see what comes! So much amazing has already happened! I can’t imagine all that is on the horizon!
Here is what I wanted to share. A long time ago, I read a book called “Red Moon Rising.” It’s written by the guy who helped start the 24/7 prayer rooms. I highly suggest reading it during this time.
In the book is something titled “The Vision Poem.” The first time I read it I kept thinking “this is what I want and have been looking for.” I forgot all about it until I woke up in the middle of the night during the Minneapolis tragedy and this poem was going through my mind.
The uprising is here. The uprising is gaining momentum and it’s going to be unleashed tomorrow during Charlie Kirk’s funeral. They are saying the gospel is going to be preached to more people than ever before in human history. But, with that comes the battle. Watch through a spiritual lens as you watch the funeral and as you watch the protestors and the violence that breaks out. Watch as people worship in the stadiums and as hateful words are spoken outside the stadium. Watch as Erika speaks. She is a spiritual force to be reckoned with even in the midst of her deep, deep grief. I have come to greatly admire her.
Here is the poem. Read it over and over. Print it and hang it up. Share it. Battle tomorrow through worship, prayers, grief and thankfulness.
The Vision Poem
So this guy comes up to me and says, “What’s the vision? What’s the big idea?” I open my mouth and words come out like this…
The Vision?
The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus. The vision is an army of young people. You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism.
They laugh at 9-5 little prisons. They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday. They wouldn’t even notice. They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.
Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation. It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games. This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause. A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the great ‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don’t need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again:
“COME ON!”
And this is the sound of the underground. The whisper of history in the making. Foundations shaking. Revolutionaries dreaming once again. Mystery is scheming in whispers. Conspiracy is breathing. This is the sound of the underground
And the army is discipl(in)ed. Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms. The tattoo on their back boasts, “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them? Can hormones hold them back? Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?
And the generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond talking, with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching. 24 – 7 – 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive inside.
On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide. Would they surrender their image or their popularity? They would lay down their very lives – swap seats with the man on death row – guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.
Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.) Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus. Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don’t you hear them coming? Herald the weirdos! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon. How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3D. And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.
Pete Greig (Red Moon Rising)
I chose keto because I wanted to do a health and wellness challenge and keto is definitely a challenge! I was getting bored and needed a new challenge. Here is what I have learned:
Buying the Keto staples = EXPENSIVE
You are VERY hungry the first week!
Keto Flu = Had it and survived it.
Cravings = Craved things I never wanted before! Now I don’t have cravings.
One thing I craved were waffles. I’m not a big pancake and waffle person but I wanted them the first week. I looked up keto waffles and found “The Best Keto Waffles” recipe. So I tried it. Even bought a mini waffle maker that Mason tried taking home with him! Here is how it went:
Almond flour waffle = AWFUL
Almond flour with cinnamon = AWFUL
Almond flour with cinnamon and vanilla = AWFUL
Almond flour with more cinnamon and more vanilla = AWFUL
That was a bad dinner night! Whoever’s taste buds they used to say these keto waffles were the best had broken taste buds.
The slower cooker is my new BFF. I have found some really good keto recipes. Mason even likes them!
I wish I could say I wasn’t cranky the first week but I can’t. I was determined to get through it but WOW.
I miss fruit. I can’t have the allowed fruits because they have seeds. When I go to the store I have to avoid the fruit section. Some people have to avoid the candy and chips, I have to avoid the fruit!
Have started back at the gym! I am about to finish week 2 of the running program. Feels good to be back.
Finished the liver cleanse. Went better than expected!
Treated myself to a new pair of running shoes.
Have lost some weight. Once I tweak the food and meals and make it through intermittent fasting, I think I will see even more loss.
Starting to work on setting up a home gym in the basement. Will be starting HIIT workouts soon.
One eye opening thing was realizing that my heart rate while running, was my normal heart rate when I was in social work.
So far the health and wellness part of the Year of Amy is going well!
I have tried to do this a few times over the past several years and completed several of the things on the list, but never finished it. I decided I’m going to do it again starting TODAY! I have a list of things I want to do or accomplish over the next year and hopefully I will be able to finish all of them!
I’ve chosen to start with my health. Nothing is wrong but COVID did a number on me and I have worked hard for two years now to heal from it. My Dr. pretty much banned me from racquetball and pickleball and I understood why after realizing I needed my inhaler several times while playing and I would be wiped out for a few weeks afterwards.
Then my ankle which took me out of commission that spring and summer. Meanwhile, I had a brand new mountain bike that didn’t see a trail at all.
When I was starting to get back to the gym is when my Dad started to get sick and two months later, passed away. Then came everything that goes with all of that.
UGH!!
Then in the midst of that I quit my job and took a BIG step of faith and started the counseling ministry. God continues to bless that on a daily basis. The fact that I just called it a “ministry” is big for me as well. I’ve worked hard at healing from past ministry experiences.
Now my brother is waiting for surgery for an aneurysm that would be fatal within 15 minutes if it ruptures. It’s very nerve-racking.
My cousin Shauna will be having open-heart surgery December 12th, so some big things are coming.
It’s easy for me to lose sight of what Amy needs during times like these and I’m determined to not lose myself again.
So…to start this Year of Amy off, I have started doing a liver cleanse, which hasn’t been as bad as I thought it might be. (Not an exciting way to start the Year of Amy 😂)
I have purchased several items from Dr. Berg and will be doing a keto-ish diet. I’m not going crazy with it like some people have! There will be no cauliflower “mashed potatoes!” So gross.
After swimming laps several days a week over the summer, I think I’m ready for the gym again. I’m not sure what COVID did to my muscles but I was never sore after any workout I attempted and I should have been given the amount of time I haven’t exercised. My legs always felt incredibly weak and I was exhausted and could sleep for several hours. The other night I went trick-or-treating with Mason and some family and we did close to 10,000 steps and I was SORE for three days! It was great! I finally had energy like before and couldn’t sleep because of that energy! So now I’m headed back to the gym this weekend!
I will post on here as a way of keeping me motivated and being able to look back and see what I accomplished. Who knows…maybe at the end there will be another tattoo! Just gotta figure out what it might be🤔!
Baby Harvey and Mason making faces into the camera. These guys are fun to hang out with!
My Mom and I planned on taking this route home to do the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Smoky Mountains.
Let me just tell you about this portion of the BR Parkway. It’s beautiful but terrifying! I do not do well with heights and driving on the edge of cliffs messes with my head. Why don’t they have guardrails?!
I pulled over a few times to take pictures and breathe.
I was very happy when we entered the Smoky Mountain Park!
As we came into the park, there were a TON of people taking photos and painting. Turned out to be a Plein Air Painters National Conference and there were 1,000 people at the park for the week.
In the field was a young Elk and then another one came walking out of the mountains and into the area where people were painting. The park rangers were on high alert for animals with the amount of people in the park. Myself and maybe 6 others were about 50 yards from the one in the field and we were told if it came any closer we would need to take several steps back.
Well, it came closer but how do you move back and give up great photos?! We took photos as we stepped back! Here is one from my phone but the majority are on my real camera.
I went back to the car to get my other lens and when I came back, another Elk was in the area.
This one got too close for comfort and lunged at some people who walked maybe 5 feet from it like it was no big deal.
We went on a drive through the mountains to get to our hotel. Here are a few photos from my phone.
Then we came across a bear playing and rolling around. This is the best picture I could get.
The next day was the drive home. That last 8 hrs was brutal! Such a great trip but I was EXHAUSTED!
This trip consisted of:
3,000+ miles driven
66+ hours driven according to the dashboard
10 states
6 beaches
4 islands
2 bears
1 jumping stingray
A lot of gators
A lot of jellyfish
1 shark
1 tornado missed by 10 minutes
An unscheduled trip to Florida
A lot of reclaiming
Incredibly thankful that God gave us all this trip together and protected and redeemed.
These two days were set aside to rest and stay local. My mom wanted to go to Drunkin’ Jacks for lunch, which is on the water in Murrells Inlet. What a great little sea coast town!
We walked the boardwalk and came across a dolphin tour. We made reservations for the sunset trip and then headed up to Myrtle Beach to do some shopping.
Went home to eat dinner and then headed out for the sunset dolphin tour. The marina was named perfectly for my Mom and her sisters. Just need to make it plural!
I forgot my phone at the condo so I didn’t get pictures of the trip on my phone but I did with my real camera. Once I upload them, and if they look good, I will post some.
It was rainy throughout the day so we didn’t see any dolphins but we did see a stingray jump out of the water. I had no idea they did that! The boat ride in the ocean was fun and the sunset was beautiful.
The next day we went to Huntington State Beach Park to see the alligators. They really are everywhere so I’m not sure I would trust walking the trails or camping there but it was very cool to see them in their natural habitat!
After that my Aunt took me out to an island to show me more of a secluded beach to go to the next time I come. It was beautiful!
The beach typically has a lot of shells and starfish but with that tornado weather we had, the tide took them back out to sea.
Once the sky cleared and the sun came out, I spent the rest of the day at the pool.
A great end to a great time in South Carolina!
I will be writing more on the plantation later on. I’ve always struggled with the days of slave trade so although the house was nice, it came at a heavy cost for the slaves who made the white man rich. The stories were awful. They correctly pointed out that those days are not over; the name has just changed to human trafficking. I didn’t get a picture of the home but I did take some of the live oak trees with the Spanish moss on them.
Charleston was kind of a bust. It rained the entire time until we left and then the sun came out.
We did a historic tour (you know how much I love tours!) but I was glad I did this one. Historic Charleston is not a section where you can just drive on your own and look around. It’s a walking town and with it raining, that wasn’t gonna happen.
After the tour, I drove my Mom and Aunts to the Charleston City Market in the historic section. They got out and shopped while I went looking for parking, which was not easy. Found a parking garage and walked, in the rain, back to the city market. When I got there, all three said they found what they wanted and were ready to go. Yeah….no! I was looking forward to this market and was not about to walk back to the car in the rain!
Here is a link to the market.
https://www.thecharlestoncitymarket.com/
I shopped and bought some things and then we ate lunch. It started to downpour but we had tickets for a boat cruise so I had to walk to get the car. My Aunt realized she left the umbrella IN the car so the walk back was awesome.
Picked them up and drove them to the harbor and dropped them off and went to find parking for the third time. I walked to the harbor, in the drizzle, just to find out we couldn’t do the boat trip. I truly felt tears forming. I was so frustrated, cold and wet and now I had to walk back to the parking garage, in the drizzle, get the car and pick them up. My day consisted of finding parking and walking in the rain! $30 of parking garage costs which is cheap if you were actually able to spend an entire day there and enjoy it without rain!
We ended up back at Pawleys Island and went to a nice seafood restaurant. I found out that shrimp and grits is now my new favorite food! Pretty sure I’ve eaten a good 10 lbs of shrimp on this trip!
So the day ended well and all was good.
After the tornado ordeal, I got up early the next day and went to a resort in North Myrtle Beach. It’s the classier side of Myrtle Beach and much calmer!
I left my phone in the locker for the day and had an 80 minute massage. It was glorious! Ended up falling asleep in the relaxation room afterwards and then used the steam room. It was such a nice day out that I decided I wanted to be outdoors instead of in the spa. So I asked which door led to the pool and the beach. “Oh, that’s just for those staying at the resort. You can use the indoor pool, though.” I told them they could close my tab and after paying, I went out to my car, got my sunscreen, towel and water and walked back into the hotel! I paid good money for that massage!
I ordered food from the bar and took it out to the beach. I enjoyed my lunch on the beach, went in the water, took a walk looking for shells and laid out in the sun.
After several hours on the beach and starting to feel a sunburn, I decided to try out the pool…
I could not pull myself away from this resort and ended up staying for 8 hours!
Fantastic day!
We got up early, ate some breakfast and then headed down to Florida for the day. I had decided that since I was going to be in Florida, I needed to have fresh Florida orange juice, key lime pie and head to a beach.
Arrived at the Visitors Center just over the Florida line and they had fresh Florida OJ. First goal achieved!
Since we wouldn’t be in Florida very long, my one Aunt decided to book a historic tour. I dodged that tour and found the nearest beach! I really don’t like tours! I dropped them off and told them to text me when they were done with the tour.
I was able to spend a few hours on the beach by myself and recharge. My parents brought me down to the Ft. Lauderdale area every Christmas for a week and then a week doing all the Disney and Sea World type stuff. My mom always planned amazing vacations and most of the time she found things to do that lined up with what I was interested in. So many stories to share!
For the past few years, I have wanted to go back to Florida. It’s been on my mind a lot but I didn’t know why. My Dad was the exact opposite of my Mom on vacations. His anger and lack of interest in doing fun things with us. Even mini-golf could turn into a nightmare!
I had a moment while laying on the beach. Memories came back and I knew I needed to pray and ask God what I needed to reclaim from those years. Then I got up and walked into the ocean.
Now, on this trip I had said I wanted to see a shark. I’ve seen a lot of sharks before but still wanted to see one on this trip. There was a guy surf fishing by me and another guy stood up and pointed and yelled, “Shark! Shark!” Sure enough, there was a shark about 75 yards out from us! That ended the time of praying and reclaiming! I went back to laying out!
Went and picked my family up and went out for lunch. Had a slice of Key Lime pie and was quickly reminded that lime tastes like cleaning solution ever since I had COVID awhile ago! It tasted awful but I ate it anyway!
We didn’t realize that St. Augustine had such a high amount of witchcraft and I had a weird experience with that, but that’s another blog post!
Since we had a 5 hour drive back to Pawleys Island, we decided to head back to South Carolina. On the drive, we found a place that had Florida oranges and some candy we used to get when I was a kid. We stopped and bought a large bag of oranges and the candy. Growing up, we had a certain orange grove we would go to every year for oranges and grapefruit so it was fun to get these things again. I walked around and did more reclaiming and thanking God.
I checked the radar before leaving and it showed rain in SC. As we came into SC, the sky was not looking good. I kept driving and went over a causeway and a massive cloud formed and part of it looked like the start of a funnel cloud. I asked my Aunts to check the radar. Their response? “Now how are we gonna do that Amy?” I reminded them they all have phones with weather apps and then they started laughing because “why didn’t we think of that?!” Meanwhile, I’m watching this cloud and I am trying not to panic. From the backseat I hear “there is rain.” Oh my word!
Kept driving and it started downporing to the point I could barely see. I was praying like crazy and once I drove out of it I had two options to choose from as far as exits go. Left or right. I knew I was to take the Myrtle Beach exit but instead I took the one going away from it. I even told my Mom I knew I was supposed to take the other exit but the car went the other direction.
They loved the detour because they saw more of SC than what a highway allows you to see. We got back on the road I was supposed to be on. It was about a 10 minute delay from taking the wrong exit.
We got to a gas station and stopped in. My one Aunt asked an employee if they had any rain and she looked at my Aunt like she was crazy. She went on to say, “A tornado just went through here. You missed it by maybe 10 mins!” I wasn’t shocked but my Aunts were! All I said was, “Look at the radar!”
We made it back to the condo. Trees and branches were down around the area but no serious damage and nobody injured.
Thankful that we were directed to take the wrong exit. I’m sure my angel was like, “Amy’s really trying to figure out the weather and nobody’s listening so I’m gonna help a girl out!”
Such a great day to just randomly drive to Florida for 6 hours!
Butterflies & Bumblebees 