TRUE NORTH: KEEP FIGHTING BACK

Beloveds.

My brain has gone on strike.

Autocorrect is changing every other word.

I wanted to cry.

I didn’t.

I put on praise music to find my True North:

Jesus.

We fought.

I won.

But that sentence needs some explaining.

Because when I say fought, I don’t mean Jesus and I were fighting each other.

Jesus was standing beside me.

He always is.

And when I say I won, I don’t mean everything suddenly went back to normal.

It didn’t.

Come sit with me.

This one needs a minute.

—

THE SNAP

If you’ve watched Avengers: Infinity War, you know about the Snap.

Thanos didn’t snap his fingers and mildly inconvenience everybody.

He didn’t scramble a few words.

He didn’t ruin somebody’s Tuesday.

Half disappeared.

Half.

People.

Families.

Plans.

Futures.

The world everybody knew existed one second—

SNAP.

—and half of it was gone.

The people who remained had to wake up inside a world they recognized…

that no longer worked like the world they remembered.

👀

Beloveds.

My stroke was my Snap.

There.

I said it.

And I need you to understand what I mean before somebody rushes in with an inspirational quote.

I am here.

I am blessed.

I love my life.

I love me.

AND—

I remember the woman whose life had a different kind of ease.

I remember long showers.

Alone.

I remember long drives.

I remember my warbling voice serenading innocent neighbors who had committed no crime worthy of such punishment.

I remember a quiet cup of coffee in the middle of the night.

I remember when the distance between “I want to do this” and doing it was much shorter.

I remember me.

Then came the Snap.

And I was still standing.

But the map had changed.

—

I sat there the other day fighting my phone, my hand hurting, my brain fogging, words changing before they could reach the screen.

Praise music was playing.

Jesus was there.

Of course He was.

I looked at Him.

ME: Jesus.

JESUS: Cassandra.

ME: I don’t like this.

JESUS: I know.

ME: That’s it?

JESUS: What would you like Me to say?

I looked at Him.

You ever want Jesus to be just a little less Jesus?

Asking for A Friend.

ME: I would like You to say this is almost over.

Jesus didn’t answer.

ME: See. That’s exactly why I don’t ask You questions I don’t want answered.

JESUS: Yet here we are.

ME: Yet here we are.

The music kept playing.

I looked down at my hand.

Back at the phone.

Then back at Him.

ME: I miss me.

This time He didn’t answer quickly.

He sat with it.

So did I.

ME: I miss how easy some things used to be.

JESUS: I know.

ME: I don’t want anybody telling me I should just be grateful I’m here.

JESUS: Did I say that?

ME: No.

JESUS: Then don’t put words in My mouth.

👀

Okay then.

Jesus came to work.

ME: I AM grateful.

JESUS: I know.

ME: And I still miss me.

JESUS: I know that too.

And there it was.

No argument.

No correction.

No spiritual lecture.

Two things sitting in the same room:

I am grateful to be here.

and

I am grieving what the Snap took.

Neither one canceled the other.

—

Then I looked up.

Not at Jesus.

Higher.

ME: ABBA?

Silence.

ME: Father, what are You doing?

Still silence.

ME: Because I have QUESTIONS.

Jesus looked at me.

JESUS: I know.

ME: I wasn’t talking to You.

JESUS: I know that too.

I kept looking up.

ME: I don’t understand this map.

The life I knew is still visible from here.

That’s the hard part.

I remember it.

I remember the roads.

I remember the woman who traveled them.

But some of those roads don’t go where they used to go anymore.

Some are blocked.

Some take longer.

Some require help.

Some days I can’t even read the doggone map.

So what do I do with THAT?

Silence.

And somewhere underneath my frustration, the praise music kept playing.

Praise.

👀

Not because everything felt good.

Not because I had received an answer.

Not because the prison door had opened.

Praise while still IN it.

And suddenly I thought about Paul and Silas.

Beaten.

Locked up.

Still in prison.

And at midnight—

they praised.

Not after the chains fell.

Before.

Not after the doors opened.

Before.

They praised while the evidence still said:

PRISON.

I looked at Jesus.

ME: Oh, I see what You’re doing.

JESUS: I haven’t said anything.

ME: You didn’t have to.

I turned the praise up.

—

TRUE NORTH

A map tells you what the terrain looks like.

True North tells you which direction is still North when the terrain changes.

👀

That’s what I had been confusing.

The map changed.

Jesus didn’t.

My circumstances changed.

Jesus didn’t.

My body changed.

Jesus didn’t.

My route changed.

Jesus didn’t.

The Snap changed a whole lot of things.

It did not move North.

I looked over at Him.

ME: You’re my True North.

JESUS: I know.

ME: You could at least act surprised.

JESUS: Cassandra.

ME: Fine.

I looked at the map again.

And for the first time, I stopped demanding that the new map look like the old one before I would move.

That doesn’t mean I stopped missing the old map.

Hear me.

I miss it.

I miss me.

I grieve.

I get frustrated.

Sometimes I want to cry.

Sometimes I DO cry.

Sometimes I have to put the phone down because my hand says, Girl, absolutely not.

Sometimes my brain and I are apparently operating in two different zip codes.

But grief is not the same thing as being lost.

Because I still know North.

—

Then the sky changed.

The air changed.

You know that feeling in an Avengers movie when the music shifts and you know SOMETHING is coming?

That.

I looked at Jesus.

Jesus looked at me.

For once, neither of us said anything.

Because in front of us stood everything that had been coming for me.

Grief.

Pain.

Brain fog.

Fear.

Frustration.

Exhaustion.

Changed plans.

Changed words.

Detours.

Loss.

Hard.

All of it.

Not metaphors anymore.

An army.

I swallowed.

ME: Jesus?

JESUS: I’m here.

Three words.

That was enough.

I reached for what I had.

Not what I used to have.

What I had.

Jesus stepped forward beside me.

Not in front of me like I wasn’t there.

Not behind me sending Cassandra into battle alone.

Beside me.

I looked at the army.

Then at Him.

ME: This seems like an unreasonable number of people for two folk.

JESUS: Cassandra.

ME: Just making an observation.

Then Jesus looked ahead.

And His voice changed.

Not loud at first.

Just certain.

JESUS: Avengers…

He looked at me.

I knew.

I straightened the best I could.

He turned back toward the battlefield.

JESUS: ASSEMBLE.

…

Nothing.

👀

I looked around.

ME: Um.

Jesus said nothing.

ME: Jesus.

Still nothing.

ME: I KNOW You did not just yell Avengers Assemble and nobody—

Then, almost too quietly to hear:

THE FATHER: On your left.

I froze.

Jesus smiled.

I turned.

And there she came.

Tansay.

And behind her—

the Beloveds.

Not spectators.

Not people standing safely somewhere sending thoughts and prayers toward the battlefield.

Coming through.

Then another opening.

FAITH.

Another.

PEACE.

Another.

PRAISE.

Praise came through LOUD.

Because apparently Praise had been waiting on this moment.

Another.

HOPE.

Then—

GRACE.

Then—

PERSEVERANCE.

And the sky opened again.

Michael.

Gabriel.

I looked at Jesus.

ME: You knew.

JESUS: Of course I knew.

ME: You could have told me.

JESUS: And miss your face?

I looked toward Heaven.

ME: Father, You see Him, right?

No answer.

I KNOW He was smiling.

—

And then—

we fought.

Not Cassandra watching everybody else fight for her.

We fought.

Faith met Fear.

Peace walked directly into Chaos.

Hope went after Despair.

Grace stood between me and the voice telling me I should be doing better by now.

Perseverance looked Exhaustion dead in the face and said:

We can rest AND continue.

👀

Praise?

Praise was ridiculous.

Praise went into battle singing.

Because Praise had already learned something in a prison cell centuries ago:

You don’t have to wait for the chains to fall before you praise God.

The Beloveds fought beside me.

Tansay fought.

Michael fought.

Gabriel fought.

Jesus fought.

And Cassandra?

Cassandra fought too.

Not the old Cassandra.

Not some imaginary version of me whose body could do everything it once did.

THIS Cassandra.

The Cassandra who showed up with what she had.

And that mattered.

—

Eventually the battlefield grew quiet.

I was exhausted.

Jesus stood beside me.

I looked around.

The map was still different.

👀

That’s important.

The battle did not magically restore the old map.

Some things were still hard.

Some things were still missing.

I still had questions.

I still missed me.

ME: So this is winning?

JESUS: What do you think winning looks like?

I thought about it.

Long time.

Then I looked behind me.

Beloveds.

Tansay.

Faith.

Peace.

Praise.

Hope.

Grace.

Perseverance.

I looked at myself.

Still here.

Then I looked at Him.

Still Jesus.

ME: Maybe winning isn’t getting everything back.

He waited.

ME: Maybe sometimes winning is knowing where North is when everything else changes.

Jesus smiled.

I looked up.

ME: Father?

Silence.

I smiled too.

ME: Yeah.

I heard You.

—

Beloveds, maybe life has snapped something in your world too.

Maybe your map doesn’t look anything like it did.

Maybe you’re grieving somebody.

Maybe you’re grieving yourself.

Maybe the future you planned disappeared.

Maybe you’re standing in a life you recognize and don’t recognize at the same time.

I’m not going to insult you by telling you it doesn’t hurt.

It does.

I’m not going to tell you faith means you won’t grieve.

I do.

I’m not going to promise everything comes back.

I don’t know that.

Here’s what I can tell you from where I’m standing:

A changed map does not mean you have lost True North.

So cry when you need to cry.

Rest when you need to rest.

Ask God your questions.

Turn up Praise while you’re still IN the thing.

Use what you have today.

And when Hard lines up across the battlefield acting like you’re standing there alone—

look around.

You might hear it too.

Quietly.

From somewhere you weren’t looking.

“On your left.”

👀

And when you turn—

I hope you find somebody standing there.

I gotchu.

I gotcha.

And God has got us all.

The map changed.

True North didn’t.

Still here.

Still His.

Still finding my way,

Cassandra

#YourLifeMattersToMe