Better to Begin Than to Have it All Together!

Hi, my name is Amy Johnson, and this is my first-ever blog post. I purchased this site well over a year ago, not long after my husband Dan passed away from Covid. I love to write, and people tell me they love to read what I write, so I figured this was a good thing to do! My friend helped me take the first steps.....and then I did nothing further until now....lol!

It's not that I haven't been writing at all. I journal every day. I've been posting on Facebook for the last 15 years. (That's where people say they love to read what I write!) But let's face it....there's always some sort of inertia to get past when beginning something new. I don't even READ blogs (sorry!) so I don't even have a good idea what they should look like!

Add to that the fact that I have ELEVEN kids (yes, you read that right, eleven....) and I've been walking through this whole new journey of deep waters, losing my husband of 31 years, and adjusting to a new life that I hadn't anticipated. I don't feel guilty for not starting until now, because I know God is not in a hurry.

So why tonight? Well frankly, although I am NOT a night person, tonight I have to stay up and bake a second birthday cake for one of my kids, because we're all getting together tomorrow to celebrate. When we get together, believe me, it takes more than one cake to have a birthday party! So the second creation is happily baking in the oven, and I have 20 minutes to spare. It's midnight. So what else am I going to do? Write my first blog post of course....

So here's a little bit about me, just so you know who's talking to you. I grew up in Maryland (the Baltimore county region). My father was a doctor - an excellent one. My mother was an elementary school teacher only until I was born, because the desire and joy of her heart was to be a stay-at-home mom. Once I came along, she never worked outside the home again, but she made our home a happy and hospitable place.

I'm the firstborn, and I have one brother who is four years younger than me. My parents took us to church, but they themselves didn't really understand the Gospel until I was about 10 years old. Once they got involved in really studying the Bible, both my father and mother trusted Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. That's when they began really teaching my brother and I what it means to walk with Jesus in this world.

I'm sure as time goes on I'll be sharing more of my testimony here on this site, so here's a quick summary! (Plus the cakes are almost done....) Having heard the Gospel in Sunday school as a very young child, I had prayed a prayer of salvation and I knew God heard me. But once my parents began teaching me the Scriptures on a daily basis, I understood more of how very much I needed to KNOW the Lord and walk with Him. I began seeking Him earnestly. As I approached my high school graduation, I knew that it was more important to me to study to know the Lord than to study anything else, so I came to the Evangelical Institute in Greenville, South Carolina. This is a two-year discipleship training school, dedicated to teaching the Word of God in order to know the God of the Word.

Among the teachers at the school was Dan Johnson, the single "bachelor 'til the Rapture" teacher on campus. I had great respect and admiration for all my teachers, and was always very touched and blessed by Mr. Johnson's Christ-centeredness, as a teacher and also as a person. It never occurred to me to be interested in him in any other way, because he was a teacher (quite a bit older than me too) and as such was a different category in my mind.

In fact, when I had first arrived on campus, a girl who had already graduated was telling me all the things I had to look forward to as a student there, and among other things she said, "Of course you'll have to get over falling in love with Mr. Johnson, ALL the girls have to get over THAT!" And my immediately thought to myself, "Now that's just the dumbest thing.....fall in love with your teacher? That is NOT what I'm here for and I will NOT do THAT....."

What I didn't know was that Mr. Johnson had noticed ME and had been praying about me for quite a while! God did some rather miraculous things to weave together the story that brought us together, and we were married in June of 1989.

How can I summarize 31-and-a-half years of marriage? God blessed us richly. He gave us the eleven children that I mentioned earlier - 7 boys and 4 girls. He provided for us in amazing ways. He made Himself known to us through joyful times and through deep waters. "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, and today and forever."

And then, suddenly, the Lord took Dan. He was diagnosed with Covid pneumonia on December 21, 2020. He went into the hospital on December 23, and he passed away on January 7, 2021.

It will take more than one blog post to even begin to touch this journey, to describe the ways that God has taught me and made Himself real to me in these deepest waters of my life. But this I can say: Jesus Christ is real. He is Lord, He is Life, and He is Love. He is the perfect Good Shepherd. He is worthy of trust. And....as I am finding out increasingly, He is the Healer of the broken-hearted.

The cakes are out of the oven, and now I'm supposed to spread them with jam, cover them with chocolate ganache, put them together with whipped cream, and cover the outside with almonds and raspberries and chocolate chips! Sound good? I hope to get it done in time to get at least a few hours of good sleep!

With that in mind, I'm going to click "publish" on this post without any fancy photos or graphics or whatever. I have a lot to learn about doing all of this! Technology is not my forte, but I do like learning new things, so bear with me!

More to come......Good night everyone!

*My friend helped me add photos of the finished cakes.