TUESDAY — THE KEY DOESN’T MAKE THE ROAD EASY 🔑🥾
Beloveds,
I have been thinking about keys.
Not cute little decorative keys. Not the kind we hang on a wall beside a word like faith and call the lesson finished.
I mean the keys that cost something.
Because sometimes you spend years staring at a chain ⛓️ without realizing there is a lock. Sometimes you know there is a lock but cannot find the key. Sometimes somebody else has been holding the key. Sometimes the door has been unlocked all along, but fear, pain, history, prejudice, grief, exhaustion, disability, rejection, or somebody else’s definition of you convinced you that you were not allowed to walk through it.
And sometimes, Beloveds, you find the key—
and discover that freedom still requires work.
🔑
That one has been sitting with me.
I am learning this in my own body.
Some things that once required almost no thought from me now require planning, patience, equipment, adaptation, humor, rest—and occasionally enough cleaning supplies to make it look like I am opening a small janitorial company. 🤣🧻🪣🧽🧴
Yes. I am talking about Potty Wars.
And YES.
I WON. 🏆🏆🤣
Laugh with me, because I certainly am.
But don’t miss the victory because the battlefield happened to be a bathroom.
We celebrate people for running marathons, climbing mountains, earning degrees and crossing finish lines. We should.
But there are victories nobody sees.
Getting dressed.
Taking a shower.
Making it safely across a room.
Getting yourself cleaned up.
Using the bathroom.
Holding a phone.
Trying to make your fingers press the tiny thing on the screen that everybody keeps telling you to “just tap.”
There is no just when your body has changed.
There is effort.
There is adaptation.
There is frustration.
There is learning.
There is grief sometimes.
There is laughter sometimes.
And there can still be victory.
🏆
My quad cane does not cancel the victory.
My wheelchair does not cancel the victory.
Needing rest does not cancel the victory.
Needing help does not cancel the victory.
Doing something differently does not cancel the victory.
And stopping when my body says ✋🏿 does not cancel the victory either.
That may be one of the keys I needed most.
🔑 Rest is not disqualification.
🔑 Assistance is not disqualification.
🔑 Adaptation is not disqualification.
🔑 Difference is not disqualification.
🔑 A messy victory is still a victory.
And here’s another one:
🔑 My body is not my enemy.
I refuse to turn recovery into a war against myself.
There are chains I want broken. ⛓️
There are doors I want opened. 🚪
There are miles I still want to travel. 🥾🥾
There is work I still want to do. ⚒️
There is an entire world I still intend to love. 🌎
But if I have to destroy myself to prove that I am healing, I have misunderstood healing.
So I am learning another rhythm:
⚒️ Work.
🥾 Move.
😭 Grieve.
🤣 Laugh.
🧻 Clean it up.
🏆 Celebrate it.
🛌 Rest.
✋🏿 Stop.
🔑 Begin again when I can.
And perhaps somebody reading this needs permission to redefine victory too.
Your victory does not have to photograph well.
Nobody has to clap.
Nobody has to understand how difficult it was.
And you do not owe anybody a performance of strength.
Maybe you got out of bed.
Maybe you stayed in bed because your body needed it.
Maybe you asked for help.
Maybe you tried again.
Maybe today you finally stopped trying.
Maybe you cried.
Maybe you laughed in the middle of something that once embarrassed you.
Maybe you found one tiny key.
Hold it.
Not because I know which door it opens.
I don’t.
Only you get to discover that.
And if you believe in God as I do, you may believe He knows the door before you ever recognize the key.
If you don’t believe in God, don’t believe yet, or never will, there is still room beside me.
Pull up a chair. 🪑
Nobody has to believe exactly as I believe to be loved here.
Bring your questions.
Bring your laughter.
Bring your mess.
Bring your keys.
Bring nothing at all if that’s what you have today.
The chair stays.
Because maybe freedom isn’t reaching some imaginary place where we never need anybody again.
Maybe freedom is being able to say:
This is the body I have today.
This is the life I have today.
This is what I can do today.
And—
I am still here.
🔑⚫️🏆🥂🥾🌎
Beloveds, what counted as a victory for you today—even if nobody else would understand why it mattered?
Tell me in the comments if you want to. Share this with somebody whose quiet victories deserve celebrating. Like it, follow/subscribe, and come back tomorrow. There will be another chair waiting.
Asking for A Friend,
Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe
Note: One step. One step. One step. You are loved. You are NOT alone. Keep on being…YOU!
Unapologetically His.
Unapologetically yours.
Why Can't I Be Loud?! 