What really matters...

On Wednesday I went to Griggs Nature Preserve. One of the interesting things about Griggs is how secluded it feels when you are down by the waterfall, and yet how close you are to the busyness of life. Because the waterfall is so loud, I didn't even hear the traffic that was zipping by above me as I had time for me and God. Yet I know there was traffic. It's a busy road I travel all the time, and if you look at the picture below, you can see how close the waterfall is to the road. When Matt and I were getting ready for our wedding, we did premarital counseling with Pastor Tom, and he talked about the window of time we had after our wedding to create "our" normal before we naturally reverted to who we had been before the wedding. Likewise, I think we have that window after any of those "away" times when we meet God and ourselves in new ways. I have several changes I am trying to make in my window following the Women in Youth Ministry Campference ...

Last week I had the privilege of traveling to Montreat, North Carolina for the Women in Youth Ministry Campference. It was a getaway at the time when I needed it most. I was tired and drained from a busy 2016 to this point, We had a big fundraiser last weekend, serving dinner to approximately 250 people and raising thousands of dollars for our summer mission trip. The conference was from Wednesday to Friday, and Thursday afternoon we had free time to do whatever it was we most needed. I'm not going to lie - part of me wanted to sleep. But I am so rarely in the mountains, and I really wanted to see the view. So despite my physical exhaustion, I ventured out with a group of new friends to climb Lookout Mountain.  I'm not going to lie. I was breathing heavily the entire hike. I had to stop and rest. And as a runner who has run half marathons, it was somewhat demoralizing to be having so much trouble climbing this mountain, when my climbing friends were ahead of me. But I kept ...

It's the beginning of a new year and a time when people make lots of promises to themselves. Some people do really well. Others, not so much. Some of you reading this may have already "broken" your resolutions. And in fact - that's what I want to talk about. The most important thing I have learned in my journey to accomplish my goals is the importance of grace. And by that I mean grace with myself. For a long time I would set lofty goals for myself. Eating healthy all the time, having a quiet time everyday, exercising multiple times a week. All of these are good things. But it wasn't until I started having grace for myself in the process that I started succeeding at any of them. Because before, if I missed a day, I saw the goal as being over. I had broken the resolution, the promise. But when I started having grace with myself, I would simply try again the next day. Or the day after that. Sometimes it has worked better than others, but I have certainly had more ...

As I scroll through my Facebook news feed these days, I find myself more and more discouraged about the state of our society. Not so much because of the tragic things that are happening - though there are many things happening in our world to be concerned about. But rather, what I find more disheartening is the way we talk about these things. I have written about this before, and will no doubt write about it again, but today I want to focus on one simple part: the reality that there is always more to the story. I don't care what the story is, and I don't care which side of the story you are on - if it's a news story these days, don't assume you have the whole story. Everything has an angle - whether it's intentional or not. That's reality. Even if we were both there, we would have different perceptions of what happened. And we weren't there. So we don't know the whole story. Now I am not saying is that you cannot have an opinion. There are certainl...

I keep seeing these posts about people picking their word for 2015. Something they want to move toward, what they want their theme to be. It seems to me to be the new form of resolutions. And as I see these posts, and consider what I would choose as my word, I honestly have no idea. Because I have no idea what 2015 will hold. But I can absolutely look back and choose a word that defines 2014 for me: Trust. A year ago, I thought things were moving along pretty well in my life. I thought I had finally found some balance and felt pretty settled. Oh, things weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I was happy with where I was. And then in January, everything changed. The details of how and why the change happened don't really matter, but it was a change I hadn't planned on. In January, it was decided that I would leave my job at the time at the end of May. And the reality is, as a youth leader, my career is much different than just a job. I have a job that infil...

If there is one thing that I had drilled into my head as a psychology major, it was the information that I am putting in this blog post. To the point where I was tired of hearing it. But as I read my Facebook news feed these days, I understand why my professors felt the need to drill this into my head because it truly is important when we look at the difference between research and anecdotes. So here I am attempting to share this important lesson with you. **NOTE** The"research" in this post is entirely made up and purposefully absurd. It is my hope that you will be able to translate the points of this post to current events, but I did not choose to use those as my example in an attempt to avoid preconceived notions about who I might be speaking to in this post (especially since this applies across numerous sides of many arguments). 1. Research deals in generalities and cannot be applied to specific people or situations. For example, say there was a research study th...

I have recently been reading a book by Brené Brown called The Gift of Imperfection. It has been an insightful read and one that I have been challenged by. The basic premise of the book is what is required in order to live a "wholehearted" life. Brown is a researcher who has spent a lot of time researching shame.  And one of the things that she found and was surprised by is that the people who are most successful  at living in a wholehearted way are those who have the courage to be vulnerable and to accept their imperfections. There is so much more to this book. Every chapter I find things that challenge me to think about the way that I live my life, and I highly recommend reading it if you are open to being challenged to grow. But what I want to talk about here is how reading this is has infiltrated my life in a way that I did not expect. I started reading this book for personal growth. But I found myself talking about it today in staff meeting at church. And th...