What really matters...

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...