2025 was something else. I’m praising God that it’s in the rearview mirror now.

Last year was easily one of the most difficult years of my life to walk through, and after experiencing three brutal years in a row, you’d think that I’d approach 2026 with caution, with a guarded heart full of skepticism rather than hope. While I fully expected that to be the case for the majority of last year, that things would never get any better, the last couple months of 2025 turned around, and something is telling me that 2026 will be a gamechanger in many ways.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been praying for God to lead me to choose a Word of the Year, and the word Obedience kept crossing my path. While I’m intimidated about focusing on obedience this year based on what the Lord has allowed me to walk through over the past few years, I’m choosing to trust Him in whatever He is asking me to do and approach this year with an open mind and surrendered heart.

2025’s Word of the Year Journey

After being busy beyond belief throughout 2024, last year I felt God leading me into a year of Stillness in 2025. As I shared in last year’s post, for me, stillness involved embracing restfulness, silence, serenity, and quiet from a biblical standpoint. As a result, last year my husband and I both stepped back from certain areas that had kept us busy in 2024 that we had realized were not aiding our spiritual walks. Sometimes, this can includes forms of ministry, and that was the case for us last year. There was nothing wrong with the ministries we withdrew from, but we both felt like the Lord was leading us to focus on other things.

As I intended in last year’s post, the year of Stillness allowed me to focus more on areas that God has laid on my heart rather than a never-ending to-do list of things other people wanted me to do. Don’t get me wrong, we all need to have a kingdom-minded heart. Serving in local church ministries is important, but something we often forget is that God also gives us talents that aren’t always conducive to specific programs in the church. Over the past year, though I was hesitant about it at first, I’ve found that stepping down from those responsibilities was the best thing for us to do in the season we walked through over the past twelve months. God also revealed specific reasons to me as to why stepping down was good for us later on into the year.

Did I still have days where I felt guilty for not pleasing people? Absolutely. Like most people, I want to be liked, but I’d rather serve God with a willing heart than out of a feeling of obligation. From the restfulness standpoint of Stillness, God taught me that just because I’m not involved with a church ministry where I’m being seen serving by others, it doesn’t mean I’m not ministering through writing Christian fiction, Christian posts here on Authoring Arrowheads, through donating to those in need and offering encouragement through that, or through my daily walk with Him.

Experiencing stillness also includes living in serenity and silence, which is the opposite of merely surviving through an ever-present state of anxiety. This was a feat to tackle through all the negative circumstances that 2025 brought. I’ve shared a few of those events with y’all in blog posts last year, so I won’t go into more detail on those, but suffice it to say I experienced spiritual attacks in several different avenues and for the longest time, my anxiety was through the roof. My faith, on the other hand, was barely hanging on. I didn’t want to trust God after He allowed all those things to happen, all those prayers to receive answers I didn’t want, but after learning to abide with Him through all things in 2024, He used those attacks to teach me how to abide with Him in stillness, to trust Him through every attack, knowing all things work together for the good for those who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). Through this process, I’ve had far less anxiety in recent months, despite still going through attacks. It was a difficult lesson to learn, but now that I’m on the other side of 2025 and see why some of those things had to happen, I’m thankful that He carried me through those storms, never leaving me nor forsaking me.

Last year, the Lord taught me that true stillness isn’t just taking a breather when life gets hard; rather, it’s learning to trust God to help you breathe again when it feels as if life is suffocating you.

2026’s Word of the Year Hopes

I didn’t intend for this to be such a long post, but here we are. 😛

As I mentioned in the introduction, the word Obedience has been laid on my heart for 2026. While I’m not sure what’s ahead for me this year, I’m feeling led to focus on doing what God asks of me and consulting His will for my life more than relying on my own plans.

What Does Obedience Mean?

Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground!

-Psalm 143:10, ESV

Obeying God means following as He leads, surrendering our ways to Him, and allowing Him to change our thoughts, actions, and intentions in ways that are more honoring to Him.

A couple synonyms for obedience include discipline and submission. In Psalm 143:10, the writer is asking God to teach him to do God’s will, for His Spirit to lead him and help him reach solid ground. After 2025, I want to be on solid ground more than ever. I know that obeying God doesn’t come without difficulties, but part of the reason I get anxiety over things in the first place is because I don’t have the discipline to submit some worries to God as an initial response and instead try to overcome the attack on my own. That never works out well. My emotions go out of whack. I may say or do something I end up regretting. I overthink like no one’s business and end up spiraling. In the last half of 2025, I’ve done better about bringing some things that give me anxiety to God first, but there are still other areas where my first reaction is to ruminate, which more times than not ends up ruining my mood. Ruminating over things that give me anxiety is in direct contrast to what God’s Word instructs us to do in 1 Peter 5:6-8, where we’re told to humble ourselves before Him, cast our anxieties on Him, and be sober-minded and watchful because the devil is trying to destroy us.

Other words for obedience are respect and servility. Something that has been weighing on my heart lately is that, sometimes, spending time with God has felt more like an item to check off in my planner rather than something I crave doing to grow my relationship with Him, and in 2026, I want to change that. Instead of coming before God feeling like I have to spend X amount of time with Him or do this specific Bible study method or pray a certain amount of minutes to be considered a good Christian, I want to focus more on Him rather than what I’m doing to spend time with Him. I want to respect God more by listening to what He has to say rather than speed-reading a devotional or muttering out a quick prayer. I aim to please God this year through living with intention to obey His commandments, and this means bringing the areas I’ve been struggling with before Him and asking Him to help me live according to His word.

Will I perfectly follow everything God asks me to do? Not a chance. As Romans 3:23 states, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. But I aim to be more open to the opportunities He presents to me and not doubt where He’s leading.

Will I read my Bible or a devotional every day and never have my thoughts stray? Probably not. But if I approach this year’s reading with the intent to hear from Him rather than the constant noise inside my head, maybe my thoughts won’t stray as much.

Will obeying God help me have a “solid ground” year with no difficulties? I doubt it, but God’s not to blame for that. We live in a fallen world, and because of that, Jesus told us to expect hardship (John 16:33). The thing is, though, that in the same verse Jesus told us to remember that He has overcome the world. By focusing on obeying God this year, I want to put total faith in Jesus’s promise and live my life knowing that He is in ultimate control.

Wherever He leads me in 2026 is where I want to go. I pray that each and every one of you reading this has an amazing new year. Let’s see where 2026 takes us. ❤

Talk to Me, Arrowheads!

I’m sorry for my rather abrupt departure last month before my break. I had planned on letting y’all know I was going on a blogging break at the end of my last post, but I ended up writing the post at the last minute and forgot. I was sick the week after and didn’t even feel like reading, so writing a separate post was the last thing on my mind. All is well now though, and I’m excited to be back to blogging!

Do you have a Word of the Year for 2026? If so, feel free to share it in the comments!

Aim high, stay strong, and always hit your mark.

-Allyson 😀