Review: One Perfect Word

One Perfect Word by Debbie Macomber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I was younger, I was more of a “deep thinker” than I am today. I spent a lot of time thinking, often about my place in the world. Being an analytical person, there were times when I noticed repetition of a theme or concept in my thoughts and concerns over a short period of time. On reflecting on these repetitions (meta thinking?) I came to a realization that I had somewhat annual themes that caught my attention. Themes were identified by a word and a phrase, like ‘justice’, or ‘good vs evil’, or ‘role models’, or ‘building a career’. So being analytical, I focused on that theme, often for a year, reading things that related, watching TV shows with awareness, and discussing with friends. When I read the description of Debbie Macomber’s “One Perfect Word”, I believed I had found a fellow traveler. Macomber has gone through decades focusing on a single word over each year. Her words, or themes, were generally chosen from Bible passages, but tied to events happening in her life. She says that words felt like they were chosen for her. I have had that feeling as well, although my sources tended to the non-secular, especially music lyrics that caught my ear. I appreciated her examination of this habit, and found her sources from scripture and the ways she examined her world through the lens of that year’s theme to be different than mine, familiar yet interesting in the differences. I would have appreciated her take on the non-secular influences on her word, but Macomber aimed this squarely at Christian readers with repeated scripture quotes. I would also have appreciated more of a description of the positive consequences of decades of this practice. I knowingly followed this practice for about a decade, yet I still find myself referring to the things that I think I learned, especially when I am trying to relate a learning to my grown children. To me, this is a, if not the, source of wisdom. Anything that can convince people to approach their world with the level of awareness this practice provides is a good thing. Glad I found the book.

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