Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. (Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird)

TENACIOUS: aggressively persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired; enduring especially when challenged; not easily pulled apart (Miriam-Webster Dictionary)

As 2025 was drawing to a close, I began my familiar ritual of searching for a Word of the Year—and this time, I got stuck. I wanted a gentle word (much like Dana VanderLugt). A word that would let me exhale. A word that was spacious. A word that would give me permission to be, rather than push me to become more, do more, toughen up. I didn’t want grit. I wanted rest.

Like so many people I love, I’m weary. And honestly, I’m exhausted from being weary.

I flirted with word release: letting go, welcoming change, trusting that “perhaps even here, I am only just beginning” (@morganharpernichols). I wondered if I could, at least for 2026, rest in the question, “What’s the best that could happen?” (@tablefor9co). I wanted that softness. I wanted that trust. But no matter how beautiful the word and the ideas the word evoked, it didn’t stay. It didn’t resonate.

Then the first week of January happened.

How do I hope for the best when, every day in the United States, the worst keeps happening? How do I welcome change when that change looks like institutions violently collapsing in real time? How do I look for softness and trust when there is so much real–or perceived–chaos? Yet, I could choose release. I am white enough, comfortable enough, insulated enough that I could look away. I could disengage. I could let it all slide past me.

But I can’t.
I won’t. 

I won’t because as I heard in church on Epiphany Sunday, “Ignoring what is in front of us isn’t an option for followers of Christ” (Rev. Dr. Ryan Boes). So instead, the word I choose for 2026 is tenacity—the determination to continue. Not as bravado. Not as hustle. But as a conscious, active decision to endure, to not be pulled apart.

Tenacity is the choice to stay. It’s the uncelebrated resolve to remain standing when everything in you wants to fold. And I really want to fold. 

During an important conversation this week, I realized that I feel paralyzed because I feel powerless. I don’t have any real agency. Yes, I can and do vote. Yes, I work hard at giving back to my church and school communities. Yes, I try to be a present and mindful partner and parent. Those actions, while at some level I know are important, don’t seem like much in the face of the death of citizens in the streets, the dismantling of institutions, the destruction of democracy.

What can I do when we let a felon have all the power to do with what he wants? Including creating chaos? What can I do when those in power lie and drop bombs and invade countries and police the streets of cities that don’t agree with them? 

I really want to fold. 

But tenacity is waking up with bruised hope and choosing—again—to look for light anyway–to look for the way the Light is shining in the darkness. Tenacity is continuing when the outcome is uncertain and the cost is very clear. It’s holding your ground not because you feel paralyzed, but because you’re faithful—to a vision, a truth, a future. It’s standing for whatever is noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8). 

Tenacity doesn’t require confidence. It only requires commitment. Tenacity is being “aggressively persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired; [it’s] enduring [when you want to quit]” (Miriam-Webster Dictionary).

And I really want to quit. 

At the same time, I know that giving up isn’t an option. I can’t give up when I want more for my daughters and their future. Tenacity begets resistance the moment we decide that what exists is not all that is possible. It shows up when systems demand silence, when history tries to replay itself, when shrinking feels safer than speaking. Tenacious resistance is choosing to speak anyway. To create anyway. To love anyway. To remain human in conditions designed to harden you.

Tenacity is an act of imagination.
It says, I can see something beyond this moment, even when the evidence is thin.

Staying is powerful.
Continuing is radical.And every time I choose not to give up, I am practicing a form of resistance the world desperately needs. So, as much as I am able, for 2026 I will choose to be powerfully and radically tenacious. Tenacity is not gentle. It does not allow me to exhale in spacious and safe spaces. Instead, tenacity forces me to breathe deep and take the next right step. It pushes me to pause and then presses me forward into action–small or big steps–that resists the darkness by brightly and boldly shining the Light. Tenacity, like real courage, compels me to “begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

Header photo by Federico Tonini on Unsplash