I’ve chosen a word for the year for the last few years.
In 2023, it was Believe.
In 2024, Intentional.
In 2025, Thrive.
And for 2026, my word is Renewed.
But to explain why, I have to go back a little.
I started therapy in 2021, but it wasn’t until 2023 that something really shifted. It was a hard year. I was in a difficult work environment, my favorite uncle passed away, and everything felt stretched thin. But it was also the year healing truly began.
That July, I took a month off and did some really deep work, both in therapy and with God. Somewhere in that process, I started learning something that sounds simple but has taken me a lifetime to actually believe: I am loved without conditions. I don’t have to perform or prove my worth to receive care. Not at work, not in relationships and definitely not with God.
As that truth began to settle in, things started to change. One of the greatest gifts was reconnecting with my cousin, who is now my ride-or-die.
Then came 2024, when some of the fruit started to show. I started a new job, got a new car and, after carrying a story in my heart for years, finished writing my first book.
In 2025, I started learning how to actually receive some of those blessings and walk in them. I shared my manuscript for review and received deeply affirming feedback and genuine interest from publishers.
And then I hit a wall…money.
Because apparently even dreams have invoices.
So I ended 2025 in an active season of waiting and discernment, which brings me to Renewed.
The verse I’ve claimed for 2026 is Isaiah 43:19: “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?”
It’s that last question I can’t stop thinking about.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve read shall ye not know it? passively, almost like God is gently pointing toward something in the distance and asking, Do you see what I’m doing over there?
But lately I’m hearing it differently. Shall ye not know it?
It feels slightly confrontational.
Maybe God isn’t asking me to stare into the distance waiting for evidence that He’s doing something new. Maybe He’s asking me why I haven’t noticed what’s already happening.
When I look back, I can see it: the healing, relationships, opportunities, writing, things I prayed for and things I didn’t even know to pray for. There are still dreams I don’t know how to reach and places in my life that look a whole lot more like wilderness than streams. But Isaiah doesn’t say there won’t be a wilderness. He says God will make a way in it. He doesn’t say there won’t be a desert. He says there will be rivers in it.
Maybe 2026 isn’t about watching and waiting for the stream to appear.
Maybe it’s about looking down and realizing I’m already standing there, ankle-deep in a stream I didn’t even notice had been forming, flowing right where I’m standing.
So I’m entering 2026 with my eyes open. Not because I know what’s coming. I don’t.
But because I don’t want to miss what’s already springing forth.
Renewed.
Let’s see what God does.