THE HAND FROM HEAVEN ✋🏾☁️🧻🤣

THE HAND FROM HEAVEN ✋🏾☁️🧻🤣

What the Potty Wars Taught Me About God, Help, Dignity, Agency—and Joy

Beloveds,

I have an announcement.

I WON THE POTTY WARS.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yes.

Me.

👸🏿

And before somebody gets excessively spiritual and turns this into a solemn testimony with organ music playing softly in the background, please understand:

There were buckets.

🪣🪣🪣

There was toilet paper.

🧻

There was laundry.

🧺

There was trash.

🗑️

There was HARD.

There was also FUN.

There was JOY.

There was laughter.

And my faith tells me something else was there too.

God.

❤️

Let me explain.

When I was in the hospital and needed toilet paper, the techs could help me without taking over everything.

They could hand me what I needed, tastefully, from just outside the door.

🧻

Think about that.

They helped me while still giving me privacy.

They provided something I needed without turning my need into humiliation.

They didn’t have to erase my agency in order to assist me.

I still needed them.

And needing them did not make me less me.

That matters.

Then I came home.

There wasn’t a hospital tech standing outside my bathroom door.

But eventually I started thinking about what had happened at home through the eyes of my faith.

And this is the picture that came to me:

God metaphorically handed me the toilet paper.

🧻

That is what I mean.

Not that the ceiling opened.

Not that a gigantic physical hand descended from Heaven.

Not that the angels arrived carrying bathroom supplies.

Although once He put THAT picture in my head…

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Now I can’t unsee it.

☁️☁️☁️

The clouds part.

Light pours down.

✨✨✨

The heavenly choir begins.

🎶🎶🎶

A majestic hand slowly reaches down from Heaven…

✋🏾☁️

And behold:

🧻

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

“My daughter…

you gon’ need this.”

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Not the Red Sea today.

Not manna.

Not water from the rock.

TOILET PAPER.

🧻

And somewhere in the bathroom:

👸🏿 Cassandra: “Thank You, Jesus.”

🪣 Bucket: “We have seen things.”

🧺 Laundry basket: “Please leave me out of this.”

🗑️ Trash: “I know my assignment.”

And the humble roll of toilet paper rises for its moment:

🧻

“I WAS CALLED FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS.”

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Beloveds, I laughed so hard.

But underneath that laughter is something I genuinely believe.

Sometimes we expect God only in enormous things.

We look for seas to part.

Mountains to move.

Doors to fly open.

Miracles big enough to announce themselves.

But what about the ordinary provision?

What about what is already within reach?

What about the thing you need for this step?

Maybe it isn’t spectacular.

Maybe nobody will write a song about it.

Maybe nobody will put it in stained glass.

Maybe it’s toilet paper.

🧻

My faith allows me to look at an ordinary provision and say:

God, You were here too.

Not because the hard disappeared.

It didn’t.

Not because suddenly I didn’t need help.

I did.

Not because my body suddenly did everything I wanted it to do.

It didn’t.

I got what I needed to take another step.

And then another.

And another.

One step. One step. One step.

👀❤️‍🩹

There is a difference between rescue and provision.

Sometimes rescue says:

“You will never have to face this.”

Provision can look more like:

“You’re facing it. I’m here. Here’s what you need for the next part.”

🧻

That realization opened something else for me.

🔑

I needed help.

And I still had agency.

Those things can exist together.

I think sometimes we confuse independence with dignity.

If I can do absolutely everything myself, then I’m independent, capable and dignified.

If I need somebody—or something—to help me, somehow we imagine that means I’ve lost something.

Nah fam.

🤣

I needed those hospital techs.

Their help mattered.

At home, I needed tools.

Those tools mattered.

According to my faith, I needed God.

He mattered.

And through all of it…

I mattered.

Needing help didn’t cancel Cassandra.

Receiving help didn’t erase Cassandra.

My body having needs didn’t make Cassandra the problem.

And this may be one of the biggest 🔑s hiding inside our ridiculous Potty Wars:

THERE WAS A MESS.

I WAS NOT THE MESS.

👀

Sit with that one.

There was something difficult happening.

There were things that needed cleaning.

There were things that needed throwing away.

There were tools I needed to use.

But none of those things defined the human being standing—or sitting—in the middle of them.

Me.

👸🏿

The bucket was a tool.

🪣

The toilet paper was a tool.

🧻

The laundry basket was a tool.

🧺

The trash can had a job.

🗑️

And Cassandra?

Cassandra was the person using what she had to live her life.

That is agency.

Agency isn’t always cinematic.

Sometimes nobody kicks down a door.

Sometimes there isn’t dramatic music.

Sometimes agency looks like:

“Okay. This is what my body is doing today. What do I need?”

Need a bucket?

🪣

Apparently we need another bucket.

🪣🪣

GOOD GRIEF, HOW MANY BUCKETS DO WE NEED?

🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Fine.

Bring the bucket department.

Get the toilet paper.

🧻

Get the laundry basket.

🧺


🥽

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Then handle the business.

And afterward?

👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

APPLAUSE.

Not shame.

Not humiliation.

Not pretending it didn’t happen.

Not deciding my dignity depends upon keeping every difficult bodily experience secret.

Applause.

Because I made it through.

And I laughed.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

That matters to me too.

Joy was there.

Joy didn’t wait outside the bathroom until everything became pretty.

Joy didn’t say:

“I’ll come back when this looks respectable.”

Joy came right into the mess.

💘🪣💘

LOOK AT THAT.

Love right between the buckets.

🤣❤️

And maybe that is another 🔑:

DIGNITY IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF MESS.

Dignity is the person in the middle of it still being fully human.

Another 🔑:

NEEDING HELP DOES NOT CANCEL AGENCY.

Another:

RECEIVING HELP DOES NOT MAKE YOU LESS YOU.

Another:

JOY DOES NOT REQUIRE PERFECT CIRCUMSTANCES.

Another:

FAITH DOES NOT REQUIRE PRETENDING SOMETHING WASN’T HARD.

And another:

SOMETIMES PROVISION IS ORDINARY ENOUGH TO MISS.

A roll of toilet paper.

A bucket.

A tool.

A tech who preserves your privacy.

Something placed within reach.

Enough strength for the next movement.

A ridiculous joke that makes you laugh until you can hardly stand yourself.

🤣

And maybe that’s why I don’t want to clean this story up so much that we lose the funny.

The funny belongs here.

The joy belongs here.

The hard belongs here.

My body belongs here.

My faith belongs here.

God belongs here.

I belong here.

❤️‍🩹

And THAT is why I keep saying:

The victory of the Potty Wars was ME.

👸🏿

Not because I needed nobody.

I did.

Not because everything worked perfectly.

It didn’t.

Not because nothing difficult happened.

It did.

The victory was that something difficult happened involving my body…

and I remained the narrator of my own life.

I could decide what it meant.

I could find the tools.

I could receive help.

I could believe God was with me.

I could laugh.

I could learn.

I could keep going.

I could tell the story.

Me.

🫵🏾🔑🚪

Maybe somebody reading this is dealing with something today that doesn’t look inspirational.

Good.

This is for you.

Maybe what you need isn’t a mountain-moving miracle today.

Maybe you need something ordinary.

Maybe you need help.

Maybe you need a tool.

Maybe you need somebody to hand you something from outside the room and give you enough privacy to do the rest yourself.

Maybe you need permission to laugh.

Maybe you need to remember:

There may be a mess.

YOU are not the mess.

And if you’re a person of faith like me, maybe you’ll look around at some ordinary little provision and whisper:

“God, You were here too.”

And if you aren’t a believer, don’t believe in God, don’t believe yet, or never will, there is still a chair for you in this story.

Maybe what you see is human ingenuity.

Help.

Adaptation.

Humor.

Community.

Resilience.

An ordinary object being exactly where somebody needed it.

You don’t have to interpret the experience exactly as I do in order to sit with me.

Bring what you see.

I’ll bring what I see.

Maybe we’ll both notice something we would have missed alone.

👓🥽🔑

Because sometimes life hands us profound lessons.

And sometimes…

apparently…

Heaven’s supply closet is open.

☁️✋🏾🧻

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Hard was there.

Help was there.

Joy was there.

Fun was there.

Agency was there.

Dignity was there.

Cassandra was there.

And according to my faith…

God was there.

❤️

Beloveds, tell me what you see in this story. What ordinary thing has helped you through something hard? Come laugh with me, share this with somebody who needs the reminder, like it if it gave you some joy, follow/subscribe and come back—we’re finding 🔑s together every day.

Asking for A Friend,

Cassandra

#YourLifeMattersToMe

One step. One step. One step. You are loved. You are NOT alone. Keep on being…YOU!

💋🧻🪣👸🏿🤣❤️‍🩹🔑🚪