Here we are again at the close of another year. This is the day I look back and take a final look at my Word of the Year, chosen early in 2025. For the last 15 years, instead of resolutions, I choose a guiding Word to be an underlying theme for the year. Release became my quiet companion—never flashy, never dramatic, but persistent in the way truth often is. It followed me into ordinary places and refused to stay just a thought. I didn’t study it so much as lived it out, one small decision at a time.

I sang “Please Release Me” as a theme song on repeat throughout 2025. I hummed it while decluttering the house, while attempting to eat better, and while saying goodbye to a couple of habits that had overstayed their welcome. Release proved far less poetic than I had imagined and far more practical. It showed up in drawers, calendars, and daily choices when I was given the vision of what was needed to change.

Letting go of physical things was only the warm-up. It was manageable, even satisfying. But it didn’t take long to notice that the resistance I faced wasn’t about the objects at all. It was about attachment—the comfort of the familiar. Releasing those things required more than a donation pile. It required honesty.

One of the more humbling surprises of the year was learning not to fix things. Sitting with unresolved situations—especially ones that weren’t mine to manage—felt uncomfortable. And yet, that discomfort became holy ground. Release, I found, meant stepping back and trusting God to work without my assistance. That lesson still has sharp edges to learn, and will, no doubt, keep me busy long into 2026 and beyond.

Forgiveness demanded its own form of release. There were hurts I had already forgiven in theory, but not in practice. Letting go had to include not picking them back up. It meant choosing peace over the familiar comfort of resentment. That type of release simply made more room in my heart.

As the year unfolded, I realized release required three movements working together: simplifying, surrendering, and letting go. Simplifying showed me what mattered. Surrendering acknowledged what I couldn’t control. Letting go was the act of trust that followed. Remove any one of those, and release remained incomplete.

Some things I released because they were heavy. Others because they were good, but no longer mine to carry. That surprised me. I had assumed release always meant loss. Instead, it often felt like alignment with truth.

By the end of 2025, my life wasn’t smaller. It was clearer. Lighter. More spacious in ways that mattered. Release didn’t strip anything essential away; it revealed what was needed all along.

As I step into 2026, the word that emerges is Grace. It feels less like a replacement and more like a companion—grace for the things I released well, and grace for the places I did not. Grace for imperfect follow-through, unfinished lessons, and the inevitable human tendency to reach back for what has already been laid down. If release cleared the ground, grace feels like what will grow there. And honestly, who knows what else? I’ve learned to keep my hands open.