Dawn of a new Era

It has been a while, 2 years and a week since I wrote a blog. It has been far from 2 years since I've written though. Life sure flies, doesn't it? Life sure changes, doesn't it? 

The last few years have been plastered with ups and downs, the predictable and the unpredictable, the common and the uncommon. Thankful that throughout thick and thin their has been one constant, and that's change. 

I could attempt to recap my life in a few paragraphs but for those who know me well, you know where I've been. I could attempt to give you a full sketch of where life has taken me, but for those of you who know me, you already know where I've gone. 

Togetherness. I suppose that's the opposite of loneliness. Togetherness. Thankful that my life looks so drastically different. About a year ago, my life took a crazy gorgeous turn. Smack down in the middle of my heart landed this amazingly talented, ridiculously beautiful, God-fearing, life loving, bundle of hope, my sweet Jaimee. Jamie wasn't the norm. Many of you who have known me over the years understand my struggle. If you've read this blog, and only God knows why you'd put yourself through that, you know that for years and years I've battled the unknown. 

What was unknown to me? My future. My ability to become a man. Not that I even knew what a real man was, I had an idea. I knew that being a man was taking care of your family. Loving others more than you love yourself. I knew those few things. What I didn't know was that part of being a man was learning how to be loved. If I've learned nothing else in the past 2-years of my life, I've learned this... how to love and how to be loved. 

I say this with the most transparent of hearts... you never know how bad you really are until you let someone love you. I guess that's a weird way of saying, through being loved you learn yourself. I've learned more about how much darkness I've let in, far more than I've learned about the light inside. Through that, the filtration process has started. Through that, the journey has truly begun. It's an impossible pain to understand when you hurt someone you love. Even in the most infantile and minute ways, a simple poorly placed word, a sour look, can feel devastating.

Loving someone doesn't mean its all roses. Loving someone means thorns. Lots of thorns. Their truly is nothing new under the sun. My dad loved 3-women mediocrely. 3 marriages, 3 divorces. My mother the same. Divorce has plagued my family for generations. Why? Because the thorns continued. A thorn is always a thorn, never absent from the rose while growing. Sometimes in life you have to live among the thorns. What does all of that mean to me? It means that being loved by someone has shown me that the thorns are worth it... I think I appreciate the rose more now than ever before.

2 years ago I could have never pictured my life where it is today. Working my dream job. Living my dream life. Loving my dream love. Knee deep in the most incredible ministry opportunity I've ever known. Helping teens make the most critical decision of their eternal lives. I can't say thank you enough to the creator of the cosmos for the life I'm currently living. We have no guarantees in life, so I'll just enjoy this moment while it lasts.

Thank you for your for reading,



God Bless,



Ben H. Strength