But after spending an absolutely ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out why my posts suddenly would not behave, I found myself doing exactly what Columbo does.
Looking.
Thinking.
Walking away.
Coming back.
Trying something.
Discovering that wasn’t it.
Looking again.
And then:
“Just one more thing…”
👀
That might be one of the most useful things I have learned about perseverance.
Sometimes perseverance is not courage first.
Sometimes it is curiosity.
🔑
We usually tell stories about perseverance after everything has worked out.
That makes them sound much prettier than they felt while somebody was living them.
We say:
She kept going.
He refused to give up.
They persevered.
Wonderful.
But what did “kept going” actually LOOK like?
Because sometimes it looks remarkably unimpressive.
🤣
Try something.
Nope.
Try something else.
Still nope.
Get irritated.
Take a break.
Come back.
Ask a different question.
Realize you have been solving the wrong problem.
👀
Now THAT will humble you.
🔑
I had been looking at my posting problem and thinking one thing was wrong.
Then another.
Then another.
At some point, the problem itself became less interesting to me than the assumptions I was making about it.
What if the problem isn’t where I think it is?
What if what LOOKS wrong is not actually what IS wrong?
What changed?
What stayed the same?
What haven’t I tested?
What am I assuming because it worked yesterday?
And—
just one more thing…
🤣🕵🏿♀️
What if I don’t need the whole answer yet?
🔑
That question matters.
Because sometimes we quit when we cannot see the entire road.
We think we need certainty before taking another step.
We want the solution.
The plan.
The explanation.
The guarantee.
The map with a cheerful little arrow announcing:
YOU ARE HERE.
And preferably another one saying:
EVERYTHING WORKS OUT RIGHT OVER THERE.
🤣
Life has been extremely inconsiderate about providing those maps.
So maybe I don’t need to know everything.
Maybe I need to know the next useful thing.
🔑
What can I learn from what just happened?
What changed?
What did not?
What have I already ruled out?
What deserves another attempt?
What absolutely does NOT deserve another attempt?
Do I need more effort?
Or better information?
Do I need to keep pushing?
Or stop long enough to notice what all that pushing has been hiding?
Do I need an answer?
Or do I need a better question?
👀
There it is.
🔑
Sometimes the key is not an answer.
Sometimes the key is the question that finally opens something.
That changes how I think about failure too.
A failed attempt can feel like:
I couldn’t do it.
But curiosity says:
Interesting.
That didn’t work.
Why?
What did it teach me?
What do I know now that I did not know five minutes ago?
What happens if I change ONE thing?
That failed attempt just became information.
It did not become prophecy.
It cannot tell me what I will never accomplish.
It can only tell me what happened THIS time, under THESE conditions, using THIS method.
That is a much smaller statement.
And smaller statements leave room for possibility.
🔑
Beloveds, maybe there is something in your life you cannot figure out right now.
I am not going to hand you a motivational poster and tell you to TRY HARDER.
Sometimes trying harder is exactly how we wear ourselves out doing the wrong thing more efficiently.
👀🤣
Instead, I’m handing you Columbo’s question.
“Just one more thing…”
🕵🏿♀️
What haven’t you asked yet?
Maybe:
What am I assuming?
What am I afraid the answer will be?
What changed?
What keeps repeating?
What have I learned?
Who could help me see what I cannot see from where I am standing?
What happens if I rest?
What happens if I change the method?
What happens if I stop demanding that today’s information answer tomorrow’s questions?
What if I am not stuck?
What if I am still investigating?
🔑
I like that.
Still investigating.
Because there are seasons when I genuinely do not know what comes next.
And I am learning that “I don’t know” does not automatically mean:
There is nowhere to go.
Sometimes it simply means:
I don’t know.
Yet.
So I can stay curious.
I can look again.
I can ask another question.
I can change my mind when the evidence changes.
I can admit when my first theory was wrong.
I can rest without closing the case.
And when I am ready—
👀
“Just one more thing…”
🤣🕵🏿♀️🔑
Maybe perseverance isn’t always charging forward.
Sometimes it is refusing to let confusion have the final word.
Sometimes it is staying curious long enough to discover that the problem was never quite what you thought it was.
Come sit with me. Yesterday, I invited you to the movies.
Today, I’m inviting you somewhere quieter.
Pull up your chair. 🪑 Bring your coffee. Bring your tea. Bring your questions. Bring your faith. Bring your doubts. Bring your laughter. Bring your grief. Bring the parts of this week that made sense.
And bring the parts that absolutely did not.
You don’t have to clean yourself up before you sit down. You don’t have to manufacture a testimony. You don’t have to convince yourself that everything is wonderful.
And you certainly don’t have to pretend.
This is Sunday Gratitude Journal with Cassandra. And I want us to begin with something important:
Gratitude is not pretending everything is good. 🔑
Sometimes gratitude is easy. A beautiful morning. A good meal. A phone call. A friend who checked on you. A song that found you at exactly the right moment. A movie that made you laugh. A cup of coffee that deserved its own standing ovation. 👀🤣☕ Sometimes gratitude comes running toward us.
And sometimes? Beloveds, we have to sit awhile before we can find it. Sometimes we are grateful and grieving. Grateful and disappointed. Grateful and angry. Grateful and exhausted. Grateful and confused. Grateful and still waiting for an answer. Those things can exist in the same person.
At the same time. That doesn’t make our gratitude fake. It makes us human. ❤️🩹
And sometimes the truth is even simpler: “I don’t know what I’m grateful for today.” You can say that here too.
Pull up a chair. 🪑
I don’t want this journal to become another assignment you can fail. I don’t want us performing positivity for one another. I don’t want somebody reading this during one of the hardest weeks of their life and thinking everybody else found the secret to gratitude except them.
No. Sometimes the journal begins with:
This week hurt. This week disappointed me. This week confused me. This week exhausted me. I wish some of what happened had never happened. And I am still here. Ma
ybe that’s where we begin. 🔑 I also want to make something very clear. We do not have to be grateful FOR everything that happens to us in order to find something to be grateful for IN the life we are living.
There are things that happen in this world that I will never call good. Cruelty is not good because somebody survived it. Injustice is not good because somebody learned from it.
Loss does not become wonderful because eventually somebody found meaning. Pain does not need a pretty bow around it. Sometimes something was simply painful. Sometimes something was simply wrong.
And gratitude does not require us to lie about that. Maybe the gratitude is: It hurt me. I wish it had never happened. And I am grateful it did not get the final word.
👀🔑 Now, you know Cassandra. My faith is part of me. I am going to talk about God. I am going to pray. I am going to tell you when I believe I saw God’s hand in something.
I am going to tell you when scripture carried me. I am going to tell you when I prayed and believed God answered. And I may also tell you about the times when I prayed and still had questions.
That is my chair. But your chair is here too. 🪑🪑
You may believe exactly what I believe. You may believe something different. You may be questioning. You may be uncertain. You may not believe in God at all. You do not have to borrow my beliefs to belong beside me.
If I say: “This week, I saw God here…” Maybe you say: “This week, I saw kindness here.” Maybe you call it humanity. Community. Love. Resilience. Goodness. Chance. Hope.
Maybe you don’t have a name for it yet. We can tell the truth about what we believe without demanding that everybody sitting b
eside us use the same language. 🌎 That matters to me. Because I don’t want a bigger table where everybody has to become Cassandra before they’re allowed to sit down. 🤣👀 Lord, one Cassandra is PLENTY. 🤣🤣🤣 I want a bigger table because the world is already full of different people. Different stories. Different beliefs. Different questions. Different histories. Different wounds. Different joys. Different ways of understanding this strange, beautiful, difficult life. And maybe we can learn something by sitting together. 🪑🌎🔑
So every Sunday, we’re going to open this journal. Not because Cassandra has all the answers. Please. 🤣
We’re opening it because reflection matters. Sometimes life moves so quickly that we survive one thing and immediately start fighting the next.
We never stop long enough to ask: What happened to me? What helped me? Who showed up? What did I learn? What surprised me? What am I carrying that I don’t need anymore? What deserves to come with me? Where did I notice God? Where did I notice goodness? Where did I notice love? Where did I notice myself becoming? 👀
Those are different questions. And we don’t have to answer all of them. This is not homework. Pick a door. 🔑
Maybe today your journal says: I am grateful for someone. Maybe: I am grateful for something small that brought me joy. Maybe: I am grateful I finally said no. Maybe: I am grateful I finally said yes. Maybe: I am grateful I changed my mind. Maybe: I am grateful somebody changed theirs.
Maybe: I am grateful something ended. Maybe: I am grateful something began. Maybe: I am grateful I asked for help. Maybe: I am grateful somebody offered help before I had to ask. Maybe: I am grateful I laughed. Maybe: I am grateful I cried. Maybe: I am grateful I rested.
Maybe: I am grateful I tried again. Maybe: I am grateful I stopped trying to force something that needed to be released. Maybe: I am grateful I discovered that a closed door wasn’t the end of the hallway.
🔑 And sometimes gratitude will surprise us. We may discover we’re grateful for something we didn’t appreciate while it was happening. A conversation. A correction. A delay. A change of plans. A stranger’s kindness. Somebody saying: “Come on.” “Try again.” “I believe you.” “I’m still here.” “Keep being weird.”
🤣🥰 Words can become keys. People can become reminders that doors still exist. And sometimes the person who handed us a key has absolutely no idea they did it.
That makes me wonder how many keys we’ve handed other people without knowing it. 👀🔑 Maybe somebody still remembers something kind you said ten years ago. Maybe somebody kept going because you called. Maybe somebody felt less alone because you sat beside them. Maybe somebody believed they mattered because, for five minutes, you treated them like they did.
Maybe you forgot the entire conversation. They didn’t. That’s worth thinking about. 🌎
And gratitude isn’t a debt. I need that written somewhere in this journal. BIG. 🤣
You don’t owe happiness because somebody else has suffered more. You don’t owe inspiration because people expect you to be strong. You don’t owe anybody a cheerful version of your pain.
And you don’t owe Cassandra a beautiful answer in the comments. If all you’ve got today is: “I made it.” Beloved, write that down.
If all you’ve got is: “I rested.” Write that down. If all you’ve got is: “I didn’t quit.” Write that down. If all you’ve got is: “I don’t know yet.” Leave some room on the page.
Maybe the answer hasn’t arrived. 📖 Sunday can hold an unfinished sentence. So can you. ❤️🩹
For me, Sunday is also a chance to look toward God. Not because every question has been answered. Not because every difficulty disappeared. Not because faith means I never struggle.
But because when I look back over my own life, I can identify places where I believe God was present even when I couldn’t understand what He was doing.
So part of my journal will sometimes simply say: Thank You, God. I don’t understand everything. I don’t like everything. I wouldn’t have chosen everything. I still have questions. But I can identify evidence that You were here. 🙏🏿
And if that isn’t your belief? Your chair doesn’t disappear. Tell me where YOU found goodness. Tell me who showed up. Tell me what helped. Tell me what you learned. Tell me what made you laugh. Tell me what you’re carrying forward.
We don’t need identical answers to care about one another’s answers. That’s part of the world I want us to practice building here. 🌎🪑
Saturday gives us something to experience together. Sunday gives us room to reflect. And Monday? Monday we’ll get up—or roll up. 👩🏿🦼👀🤣
Maybe that’s part of our rhythm now. We don’t rush from one thing to another without noticing what happened to us along the way. We stop. We look. We learn. We release what needs releasing. We carry what deserves carrying. And then we continue. Not perfectly. Not identically. Together. 🌎
Before we close our first Sunday Gratitude Journal, I don’t want to give you twenty questions. Just one. Take it with you. Sit with it. Answer it publicly if you want. Answer it privately if you don’t. Write it somewhere. Think about it. Pray about it. Laugh about it if your answer turns out to be something ridiculous. 🤣 Here it is:
🔑 WHAT IS ONE THING YOU’RE GRATEFUL MADE IT THROUGH THIS WEEK WITH YOU? Maybe it’s your faith. Maybe it’s your family. Maybe it’s a friendship. Maybe it’s your sense of humor. Maybe it’s hope. Maybe it’s your favorite coffee mug. ☕🤣
Maybe it’s a dream you thought you had lost. Maybe it’s one tiny bit of courage. Maybe it’s a question you’re finally willing to ask. Maybe it’s your voice. Maybe it’s you.
👀 Yeah. You. Maybe the thing that made it through this week with you… was YOU. And perhaps we don’t acknowledge that often enough. You carried yourself through days nobody else completely saw. You made decisions. You changed decisions. You endured disappointments. You experienced little joys. You got some things right. You got some things spectacularly wrong.
🤣 You learned. You rested. You kept becoming. And here you are. Not finished. Not required to be. Still here.
🪑🔑 So come sit with me on Sundays. Bring your gratitude when you have it. Bring your questions when you don’t. Bring your faith. Bring your doubt. Bring your laughter. Bring your tears. Bring the story exactly where it is.
There is room. Believer. Nonbeliever. Certain. Uncertain. Whosoeverwill. Come. 🪑🌎
I will tell you what I believe. You can tell me what you believe. We can listen. We can learn. We can disagree. We can laugh. We can be quiet. And perhaps, somewhere in all of that, we’ll notice a few more reasons to be grateful that we’re sharing this complicated world with one another. Different stories. Same table. ALL are keepers.
🔑🌎🪑 Welcome to Sunday Gratitude Journal with Cassandra. The journal is open. The chair is waiting. And there is room on the page for you.
Every Saturday, we’re going to the movies together.
Well…
Sort of. You don’t have to buy a ticket. You don’t have to get dressed. You don’t have to leave your house.
And you certainly don’t have to pay movie-theater prices for popcorn.
Every Saturday at NOON, I’m opening the doors to our little Movie Saturday with Cassandra matinee.
I’ll bring a movie. You bring you. That’s it.
Some weeks we’ll laugh. Some weeks we’ll cry. Some weeks we’ll probably holler at the screen because somebody in the movie has apparently misplaced ALL their good sense.
Some movies may make us think about family, friendship, race, love, grief, faith, disability, second chances, forgiveness, education, aging, belonging, or what it means to become somebody we didn’t expect to become.
And some weeks? Beloveds, we may just watch a good movie.
PERIODT.
Everything does not have to become homework. Sometimes joy gets to simply be joy.
For our very first Movie Saturday, I had two movies in mind. And My Bestie had opinions. I had opinions. There may have been a tiny disagreement.
Okay.
Maybe not tiny.
But after careful consideration, extensive deliberation, and the completely scientific process known as Cassandra picked the one she wanted to watch, we have a winner.
THIS WEEK’S MOVIE:
BACK TO SCHOOL MOM Starring Kimberly Elise and Loretta Devine.
This one gives us plenty to work with:
Education. Motherhood. Second chances. Unfinished business. Dreams that didn’t disappear simply because life happened. And becoming.
I already suspect we’re going to have some THOUGHTS. But here’s something important about Movie Saturday:
You don’t have to see what I see. You don’t have to like the character I like. You might understand somebody I absolutely wanted to fuss at.
You might notice something I completely missed. You might love the movie. You might hate it. You might change your mind halfway through.
So might I. That’s part of the fun. Different people can sit on the same couch, watch the same story, and walk away carrying completely different things.
That doesn’t have to separate us. Sometimes it can help us understand one another better.
And everybody gets a chair here. Believer. Nonbeliever. Questioning. Certain. Uncertain. Movie lover. Person who hasn’t watched a movie in six months. Person who comes exclusively for the popcorn. Whosoeverwill. Come.
You don’t have to believe what I believe to belong with me. You don’t have to agree with Cassandra to sit beside Cassandra. That’s not what the chair is for.
The chair says: Come as you are. Watch when you can. Laugh when something is funny. Cry if something gets you. Think if something makes you think. Disagree when you disagree. Change your mind if you change your mind.
And if all you get from today’s movie is two hours when life wasn’t asking something from you? Beloved, that counts too. ❤️
Because maybe movies can do something else for us. Maybe stories let us borrow somebody else’s eyes for a little while. Maybe they help us recognize people we’ve misunderstood. Maybe they remind us of somebody we love.
Maybe they show us something uncomfortable about ourselves. Maybe they give us language for something we’ve felt but couldn’t quite name. Maybe they make us laugh until our stomach hurts.
And maybe every once in a while, somewhere in somebody else’s story, we find a little for our own. That’s worth pulling up a chair for.
So grab your popcorn. Grab your snacks. Grab your blanket. Grab the good chair before somebody else gets it. 藍 And come watch with me. SATURDAY MATINEE 12:00 PM
You don’t have to start precisely at noon. Noon is just when Cassandra opens the theater doors.
Come when you can. And after we’ve watched? Ohhhh, Beloveds. WE’RE GONNA TALK.
What did you notice? Who did you understand? Who got on your LAST nerve? Did anybody surprise you? Did anything make you reconsider something you thought you already knew? Did you laugh? Did you cry? Did you yell at your television?
And perhaps most importantly: Did you enjoy yourself? Because we’re building something here that has room for serious conversations AND popcorn. Faith AND questions.
Learning AND laughter. Different stories. Different perspectives. Different people. Same couch. One amazing community.
Welcome to Movie Saturday with Cassandra. The theater is open. The popcorn is ready. And there’s a chair here with your name on it. Come watch a movie with me.
PRE-NOTE: I have been really sick but fighting to get this to you unscathed. Pain and 🤒 won’t let go
Still, I fight on. Hours late, but here. Will have to come back to add photos. Here goes nuttin…
📫 THE CHAIR STAYS. 🪑💜 Beloveds,
I need to tell you something about the chair. Not a chair.
The chair.
The one sitting beside me. The one I keep putting into these pictures. The one that might look empty if you do not know what you are looking at. It is not empty. It has never been empty.
That chair is there on purpose. When I first started imagining this little world we have been building together, I kept seeing a chair beside me.
Sometimes we are fishing. Sometimes we are sitting near the water. Sometimes we are traveling. Sometimes we are laughing. Sometimes I am tired. Sometimes I am thinking. Sometimes I am simply looking out at this beautiful, complicated 🌎 and wondering what God is teaching me next.
But there is a chair.
🪑 And the chair stays. Because somewhere along the way, I realized what it meant.
The chair is an invitation.
It says: Come sit with me. You do not have to believe everything I believe. You do not have to look like me. You do not have to sound like me. You do not have to vote like me. You do not have to worship like me—or worship at all.
You do not have to understand everything about my life. And I do not have to understand everything about yours. You can still sit down. 💜 That matters to me. Because too many people have spent their lives wondering whether there is a chair for them. Some of us learned very early what it feels like to walk into a room and wonder:
Where am I supposed to sit? Some know what it feels like to be left out. Some know what it feels like to be misunderstood. Some know what it feels like to be tolerated instead of welcomed. Some know what it feels like to have people decide who you are before you ever get the opportunity to introduce yourself.
Some have been told directly that the table was not built for them. And some were technically allowed at the table but were made to feel every single minute that somebody wished they were not there. I know something about wanting to belong. And maybe that is one reason this chair matters so much to me. I cannot fix every table. I cannot make every room welcoming. I cannot force anybody to see another human being with compassion.
But I can decide what happens beside me. And beside me? There is a chair.
🪑 For the person who believes. For the person who doubts. For the person who has questions. For the person who is angry. For the person who is grieving. For the person who has made a mess. For the person rebuilding after the mess.
For the person who feels strong today. For the person barely hanging on. For the person everybody notices.
And especially for the person who has gotten used to being overlooked. Sit down.
You do not have to perform first. You do not have to explain yourself into worthiness. You do not have to make yourself smaller so I can feel bigger. And I do not have to disappear so you can belong either. There is room for both of us.
That may be one of the most important things I am learning. Making room for you does not require erasing me. And being fully me does not require pushing you out of the chair. We can be different. We can disagree. We can ask hard questions. We can correct one another. We can learn. We can laugh.
We can occasionally get on one another’s nerves. 🤣 We can even have to repair something we broke between us. And still—the chair stays.
🪑💜 Because belonging cannot mean, “You may stay as long as you never disappoint me.”
That is not belonging. That is probation. Love has to be sturdier than that. Grace has to be bigger than that. Community has to be brave enough for that. And Lord knows, I am still learning how to do it.
I am learning that loving people does not mean pretending harm did not happen. I am learning that forgiveness does not mean abandoning boundaries. I am learning that listening does not require surrendering my own voice. I am learning that disagreement does not automatically make somebody my enemy.
And I am learning that sometimes the bravest thing we can do after something has gone wrong is look at the chair and say:
No. Leave it there. We are going to try again. 💜
That is the world I want my love to keep showing.
Not a perfect world. Not a world where everybody suddenly agrees. Not a world where difference disappears. I do not want that world. I want this one.
A world full of colors. Cultures. Accents. Bodies. Abilities. Stories. Questions. Faith. Doubt. Music. Laughter. Tears.
People still becoming. People still learning. People still getting some act right. 🤣 People still discovering that somebody else’s humanity does not threaten their own.
And wherever I am in that world— Paris. Chicago. At the ocean. At the Grand Canyon. In a library. On a sidewalk. Fishing somewhere with absolutely no idea whether I am doing it correctly. 🎣🤣 There will be another chair.
🪑
Maybe sometimes somebody will be sitting in it. Maybe sometimes it will appear empty. But now you know. It isn’t empty. It is holding space. For conversation. For possibility. For reconciliation. For curiosity. For friendship. For somebody I have not met yet.
Maybe even for you. So when you see that chair show itself from now on, do not ask: Who forgot to sit there? Remember what it means.
It means: YOU ARE WELCOME HERE. Pull up a seat. Bring your story. Bring your questions. Bring your whole complicated self. I will bring mine too.
We do not have to become the same person to sit beside one another. We just have to remember that the person in the other chair is a human being whose life matters.
And Beloveds—your life matters to me. So wherever this journey takes us next, I already know one thing. The scenery will change. I will change. You will change. We will learn things. We will unlearn things. We will laugh. We may cry.
We might even have to move the furniture around sometimes. 🤣
But that chair? THE CHAIR STAYS. 🪑💜 Asking for A Friend, Cassandra
I have tried since after midnight to have this scheduled for 6:30. God and life had other plans. Be encouraged… RISE
#YourLifeMattersToMe Note: One step. One step. One step. You are loved. You are ¹ alone. Keep on being…YOU! Unapologetically His. ❤️
Because I KNOW this cannot possibly be the route I selected.
I distinctly remember requesting something smooth.
Maybe a little sunshine.
A reasonable incline.
Snacks.
Adequate bathroom facilities.
And preferably NO surprise character development before lunch.
Yet here we are.
🗺️
PLAN A ➡️ CLOSED.
PLAN B ⬅️ UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
PLAN C ⤴️ APPARENTLY REQUIRES EQUIPMENT.
PLAN D ⤵️ Why are we even going down there?!
And then there’s one handwritten sign leaning sideways beside the road:
PROCEED SOMEHOW.
Sir.
Ma’am.
Beloved.
That is not a direction.
🤣🤣🤣
Life has an absolutely fascinating habit of changing the itinerary without consulting the traveler.
You packed for one destination and somehow ended up somewhere requiring an entirely different wardrobe.
You practiced the speech and nobody asked the question.
You prepared the answer and life changed the test.
You organized Monday beautifully and Tuesday arrived carrying a folding chair, three unidentified problems and absolutely no paperwork.
😭
And sometimes all you can do is stand there looking at the situation like:
You tried it.
Because I might be on the detour—
but I still have some agency around here.
🔑
I can stop.
I can rest.
I can ask questions.
I can ask for help.
I can refuse foolishness.
I can change direction.
I can laugh.
I can cry.
I can sit down.
I can get back up.
I can reconsider.
I can say, Nah, fam.
I can take two seats if necessary.
I can take THREE if somebody brings snacks.
🤣
And perhaps most importantly:
I do not have to insult myself because the road got difficult.
The map can be ridiculous without ME being ridiculous.
The situation can be frustrating without ME being a failure.
The plan can fall apart without ME falling apart with it.
And even when I do fall apart a little?
Okay.
Apparently that was on today’s itinerary too.
❤️
We’ll gather the pieces.
We’ll pull up a chair.
We’ll get some water.
We’ll find somebody trustworthy.
We’ll breathe.
We’ll laugh when we’re ready.
And then we’ll decide what belongs to us next.
Because yesterday’s plan does not own today’s person.
🔑🔑🔑
Now, my faith tells me God can work with a detour.
Actually, if I read my Bible correctly, He has quite a history of meeting people in places that were definitely NOT on their original itinerary.
Wilderness.
Boats.
Prisons.
Roads.
Storms.
Gardens.
Mountains.
Dinner tables.
And more than a few situations where somebody probably wanted to ask:
Lord…THIS is the plan?
👀🤣🙏🏿
I don’t always understand Him.
I don’t pretend to.
But I trust Him enough to keep walking when I can, sitting when I need to, and listening along the way.
And if faith isn’t part of your map?
Come sit down anyway.
Atheist.
Agnostic.
Questioning.
Believing.
Not believing.
Still deciding.
Never planning to decide.
You do not need my theology to understand a detour.
Life has handed every kind of human being at least one map that made absolutely NO sense.
🌎❤️
So maybe we can meet each other there.
Not pretending our roads are identical.
Not demanding everybody travel the way we travel.
Just saying:
Ohhhh. Your map got weird too?
🤣
Pull up a chair.
Now listen, Beloveds.
If you are standing somewhere today thinking,
This was absolutely NOT the plan…
Welcome.
Apparently, we have a club.
There are no dues.
The dress code is whatever you managed to put on.
Attendance is optional.
Snacks are strongly encouraged.
And our official transportation policy is:
Whatever gets you there.
Feet.
Wheels.
Cane.
Walker.
Crutches.
Somebody’s arm.
A chair.
A pause.
A crawl.
A prayer.
A good friend.
One stubborn little step.
However you move through this world—
your movement belongs to you.
💯🔑
And if somebody comes along pointing at your detour and explaining how THEY would have traveled it?
Wonderful.
Hand them the map.
🤣🤣🤣
Go ahead.
Since you know everything.
You drive.
I’ll be over here with my snacks.
😭🤣
Beloveds, sometimes encouragement sounds profound.
Sometimes it sounds like scripture.
Sometimes it sounds like somebody whispering, Keep going.
And sometimes encouragement is simply looking at the absolute foolishness happening around you and deciding:
This situation will NOT steal every laugh I have left.
That laugh belongs to me.
That joy belongs to me.
That choice belongs to me.
🔑
So no, this may not have been Plan A.
Frankly, I’m beginning to suspect Plan A left the group chat several exits ago.
🤣
But I’m still here.
You’re still here.
There is still road ahead.
And apparently—
THIS IS THE PLAN.
Or at least this is where we are.
And HERE?
We can work with HERE.
🛣️🔑❤️
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. ❤️
If your life has ever looked at your carefully prepared plans and said, “That’s cute” 🤣, come tell us about your detour. Comment, share this with somebody whose map has gotten weird, like it, subscribe/follow, and come back for some daily encouragement.
Apparently somebody, somewhere, got appointed President of the International Committee of Who Gets to Be Beautiful.
Nobody remembers voting.
Yet somehow, human beings have spent generations walking around with imaginary clipboards deciding:
Too dark.
Too light.
Too fat.
Too thin.
Too loud.
Too quiet.
Wrong hair.
Wrong nose.
Wrong body.
Wrong clothes.
Wrong accent.
Wrong voice.
Wrong neighborhood.
Wrong country.
Wrong way of speaking.
Wrong way of moving through the world.
And some of us received those evaluations before we were old enough to understand that the people holding the clipboards did not actually have any authority.
I was eight years old when “ugly” became more than a word.
Children can learn very early which faces the world celebrates and which ones it mocks. They can learn who gets invited, who gets chased down hallways, who sits at the lunch table surrounded by laughter—and who learns how to eat while pretending being alone does not hurt.
Sometimes a child carries one careless word for decades.
Ugly.
That word can grow up with you.
It can follow you into mirrors.
Into photographs.
Into friendships.
Into dating.
Into marriage.
Into classrooms.
Into workplaces.
Into churches.
Into hospital rooms.
It can even follow you into recovery, when the body you finally learned to love suddenly moves differently, sounds differently, needs different equipment, or requires help doing things it once did without thought.
And that is why this conversation is bigger than beauty.
It is about belonging.
Because humanity has created thousands of sophisticated ways to say:
You would be easier for me to accept if you were a little less you.
Speak differently.
Straighten this.
Hide that.
Lose this.
Change that.
Fix your accent.
Lower your voice.
Control your face.
Make your body less noticeable.
Make your disability less inconvenient.
Make your Blackness less Black.
Make your culture easier for me to understand.
Make your faith quieter.
Make your doubt quieter.
Make your anger prettier.
Make your grief more comfortable.
Make yourself acceptable—
and then perhaps we will let you belong.
Nevertheless.
However.
What if belonging was never theirs to give?
🔑
What if the little girl somebody called ugly was never ugly?
What if the accent somebody mocked was never broken English?
What if the voice somebody dismissed was carrying wisdom they simply had not learned how to hear?
What if the wheelchair was not an eraser?
What if the cane was not a declaration of defeat?
What if scars were not disqualifications?
What if age did not subtract beauty?
What if different was never another word for deficient?
What if the problem was never the human being standing before us—
but the tiny measuring stick we were taught to use?
💔🌎
The world is heartbroken.
And sometimes we keep handing broken measuring sticks to one another.
That is one chain I desperately want us to break.
⛓️ You must look like this to be beautiful.
🔑 No. Human beauty was never manufactured from one template.
⛓️ You must sound like this to be intelligent.
🔑 No. Intelligence has accents.
⛓️ You must move like this to be whole.
🔑 No. Wholeness has wheelchairs, walkers, braces, prosthetics, canes, trembling hands, altered bodies and very creative ways of getting from here to there.
⛓️ You must believe what I believe to sit beside me.
🔑 No. Pull up a chair.
Believer.
Atheist.
Agnostic.
Questioning.
Certain.
Uncertain.
Still figuring the whole thing out.
Come sit.
My faith does not require me to make you smaller so God can be bigger.
I believe God so loved the world.
Not the polished world.
Not the attractive world.
Not the Christian-enough world.
Not the able-bodied world.
Not the English-speaking-with-the-approved-accent world.
The world. 🌎
And if you do not believe any of that?
You still get the chair.
Because you matter to ME.
Not because you agreed with me.
Not because you passed a theology examination.
Not because you became inspirational enough for somebody else’s story.
Not because somebody finally decided you were beautiful.
You matter because you are here.
Maybe somebody called you ugly.
Maybe nobody ever said the word aloud, but they taught it to you anyway.
Maybe they taught it through who they photographed.
Who they dated.
Who they hired.
Who they listened to.
Who they interrupted.
Who they believed.
Who they protected.
Who they mocked.
Who they called “professional.”
Who they called “articulate.”
Who they called “beautiful.”
And who they simply refused to see.
Beloved,
I cannot go backward and sit beside every lonely eight-year-old.
I wish I could.
But I can pull out a chair today.
I can tell the child.
The teenager.
The grown woman.
The grown man.
The elder.
The person staring at a body that has changed.
The person whose speech sounds different.
The person whose accent enters the room before anybody bothers learning their name.
The person who still avoids photographs.
The person who learned to make jokes about themselves before anybody else could.
The person who still hears an old insult when they look into a mirror:
That measuring stick was broken.
Throw it away.
🗑️
Actually—
put it in the recycling bin.
We are trying to be responsible citizens. 🤣🥰
Then come back over here.
We have chairs.
We have room.
We have work to do.
And we have an entire heartbroken world waiting to discover what might happen when human beings stop grading one another and start seeing one another.
I see you.
Not despite the things somebody taught you to hate about yourself.
I am learning to see you with them.
Your face.
Your body.
Your age.
Your history.
Your scars.
Your mobility equipment.
Your language.
Your accent.
Your laugh.
Your silence.
Your questions.
Your magnificent, complicated humanity.
Keep it.
All of it.
You were never required to become somebody else’s definition of beautiful before you became worthy of love.
And perhaps today one of us can find the courage to look into the mirror and tell that old word—
“You tried it.” 🤣
Then hand it its little imaginary clipboard.
Show it the door.
And get on with the holy, hilarious, difficult, beautiful business of being alive.
Because the world does not need another perfectly acceptable human being.
🌎 The world needs YOU.
And Beloved—
#YourLifeMattersToMe.
Asking for A Friend, Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe
Note: One step. One step. One step. You are loved. You are NOT alone. Keep on being…YOU!
If this found a tender place in you, pull up a chair in the comments. Share it with somebody who spent too many years believing a broken measuring stick. Like it, follow/subscribe, and come back—we are finding keys together every day. 🔑💔🌎🥹
