Choosing a Word for 2026 (and Letting It Choose You)
For several years now—at least back to around 2008—I’ve chosen a word to guide my year. Not a resolution.Not a checklist.Just a single word. It’s a practice that really took shape for me around 2012, when my Sunday school class read My One Word by Mike Ashcraft together. Ashcraft describes the purpose of choosing one word simply and beautifully: to help people walk with God. His book offers a kind of manual—choose a word, pair it with a scripture, meditate on it, and return to it again and again as the year unfolds. That framework stuck with me. Over the years, I’ve chosen words like heal, laugh, yes, and energy. Some of those words shaped entire seasons of my life. Others worked more quietly, doing The rest of the story