Heart Check — Wednesday, October 7, 2026

What has “should” locked you out of? 🔐

Beloveds,

There is a little word that can build one enormous lock.

Should.

I should be further along by now.

I should have healed by now.

I should be over it.

I should have known better.

I should have more money saved.

I should have found my person.

I should have the career figured out.

I should be stronger.

I should be happier.

I should be able to do what I used to do.

I should have forgiven myself already.

👀

That last one gets me.

Because we can even turn self-forgiveness into another reason to punish ourselves.

Look at what “should” can do.

It takes the life we imagined and holds it beside the life we actually have.

Then it points at every difference and calls it failure.

But what if it isn’t?

❤️

Some of us made plans before we knew what life was going to ask of us.

Before the loss.

Before the diagnosis.

Before the layoff.

Before the divorce.

Before the caregiving.

Before the betrayal.

Before the accident.

Before the money disappeared.

Before somebody died.

Before our bodies changed.

Before the opportunity didn’t come.

Before life took a road we never put on the map.

And now we are judging the person standing here today according to plans made by somebody who didn’t know any of that was coming.

Beloveds…

How could they?

🔐

Maybe the person you need to forgive isn’t somebody who failed you.

Maybe it is you.

The you who couldn’t make the original plan happen.

The you who didn’t see it coming.

The you who made a choice with incomplete information.

The you who stayed too long.

The you who left.

The you who trusted.

The you who didn’t trust.

The you who didn’t know then what you know now.

The you who survived something and discovered that surviving it changed you.

👀❤️

Maybe self-forgiveness sometimes sounds like:

I forgive myself for being changed by what happened to me.

Whew.

Because some of us aren’t only grieving what happened.

We are grieving who we thought we would be by now.

The marriage.

The family.

The career.

The house.

The retirement.

The health.

The independence.

The relationship.

The dream.

The version of ourselves we were certain would be standing here.

And grief like that deserves to be called grief.

Not failure.

❤️

There is another kind of “should” too.

The one that comes from everybody else.

At your age, you should…

A good parent should…

A good spouse should…

A successful person should…

A strong person should…

A believer should…

A woman should…

A man should…

Someone like you should…

Hold up.

Whose “should” is this?

👀

Mine?

My family’s?

My culture’s?

Social media’s?

Someone who has never lived one day of my life?

Or is it an expectation I created years ago that no longer fits the life I actually have?

Because not every expectation deserves permanent authority over us.

🔑

And I want to be careful here.

Releasing “should” doesn’t mean releasing accountability.

Sometimes we really did get something wrong.

Sometimes there is an apology to make.

Something to repair.

Something to learn.

Something to change.

But accountability says:

This needs attention.

Shame says:

This proves something is wrong with you.

Those are not the same thing.

👀👀

A correction is not automatically a condemnation.

A mistake is not an identity.

A changed timeline is not necessarily a failed life.

And being somewhere other than where you expected to be does not automatically mean you went nowhere.

❤️

Maybe “should” has kept you so busy staring at an imaginary finish line that you haven’t noticed how far you have actually traveled.

Maybe you didn’t arrive where you planned.

But look at what you carried.

Look at what you survived.

Look at what you learned.

Look at what you had to rebuild.

Look at how many times you began again.

That counts too.

So today’s Heart Check asks:

Where did I think I should be by now?

Who taught me that?

What happened between there and here?

Am I holding myself guilty for circumstances I never controlled?

Is there something I truly need to take responsibility for—or am I calling myself a failure simply because the map changed?

And then this one:

What has “should” locked me out of enjoying, noticing or loving about the life I actually have today?

🔐❤️

Maybe joy has been sitting right beside us while we kept looking down the road for the life that was “supposed” to arrive.

Maybe peace has been waiting for us to stop prosecuting ourselves.

Maybe there is a version of us standing right here who deserves to be known instead of constantly compared with somebody who existed only in our plans.

So today…

don’t force the lock.

Just notice the word engraved on it.

Should.

And consider whether it still belongs there.

Because maybe you didn’t fail.

Maybe the map changed.

And maybe loving yourself here is not giving up on where you’re going.

Maybe it is finally refusing to abandon the person who actually made the journey.

❤️🔐🔑🪑

loving me some you
Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe

DO NOT REDUCE ME TO WHAT CHANGED.

Beloveds.

Something can change about a person without becoming the definition of the person.

Read that again.

Because we do this to people all the time.

We meet the diagnosis.

The disability.

The divorce.

The grief.

The unemployment.

The mistake.

The scar.

The wheelchair.

The cane.

The changed voice.

And somewhere along the way, we stop looking for the whole human being.

👀

Yesterday we talked about this:

A changed voice is still a voice.

Today I want to take that one step further.

A changed thing is not necessarily the whole thing.

I can tell you what changed about me.

I can also tell you what didn’t.

I still laugh.

I still think.

I still dream.

I still love.

I still have opinions.

Plenty of them. 😎

I still enjoy music.

I still enjoy movies.

I still have something to say.

I am still learning.

Still growing.

Still becoming.

Still me.

And beloveds, this is bigger than my story.

Sometimes somebody is going through the hardest chapter of their life and everybody around them starts treating the chapter like it is the title of the whole book.

It isn’t.

See what happened.

Acknowledge what changed.

Make room for what hurts.

Help where help is wanted.

But keep looking for the person.

Jesus met people in circumstances other people had already used to define them.

The blind man.

The woman at the well.

The man at the pool.

The woman caught in adultery.

He saw what was happening.

But He also saw who was there.

That matters to me.

And if Jesus is not part of your belief system, the human challenge remains:

Do not make somebody disappear behind the thing you noticed first.

Tomorrow we’re talking about joy.

And that belongs here too.

Because people living with hard thangs are still allowed to laugh.

People grieving are still allowed to dance.

People whose bodies changed are still allowed to enjoy their bodies and their lives.

People rebuilding are still allowed to have a ridiculously good day.

💃🏿

Do not be surprised when somebody you have filed under struggling starts laughing.

Do not be confused when somebody you have filed under disabled starts living loudly.

Do not assume somebody you have filed under grieving has betrayed their grief because you caught them smiling.

Human beings are bigger than one adjective.

🔑 See the change.

But keep looking.

There is a whole person standing there.

You matter to me.

Not just the easiest part of you to describe.

Not just the hardest thing that ever happened to you.

You.

Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe

Heart Check — Tuesday, October 6, 2026

What have you locked away? 🔐❤️

Beloveds,

Yesterday we asked where we might be stuck.

We didn’t kick down any doors.

We simply asked what happened there.

Today I want to go a little deeper.

What have you locked away?

Not your jewelry.

Not your important papers.

You.

👀

What part of yourself did you decide was safer behind a locked door?

Maybe your tenderness.

Your trust.

Your joy.

Your anger.

Your grief.

Your creativity.

Your voice.

Your ability to dream.

Your need to be loved.

Your willingness to need anybody at all.

Maybe somebody taught you that being soft made you weak.

So you got hard.

Maybe somebody laughed when you dreamed out loud.

So you stopped telling people what you wanted.

Maybe you trusted someone with the tender parts of you and they mishandled them.

So you decided nobody else would ever get close enough to do that again.

Maybe you cried and somebody told you to get over it.

So now you cry where nobody can see.

Maybe you needed help once and nobody came.

So you built an entire identity around:

I don’t need anybody.

🔐

Beloveds, sometimes the things we call personality are actually protection we have worn for so long that we forgot when we put it on.

And protection isn’t automatically bad.

Some locks were necessary.

Some boundaries saved us.

Some closed doors gave us enough quiet to survive what was happening on the other side.

So this isn’t about judging the lock.

Remember what we said yesterday:

What happened here?

❤️

But there is another question worth asking.

Is what protected me then still protecting me now—or is it keeping me from something I want today?

👀

Because a shelter can become a prison without us noticing when the danger has changed but the door remains locked.

And sometimes we don’t only lock other people out.

We lock ourselves in.

We want connection but won’t risk being known.

We want joy but feel guilty whenever it arrives.

We want to dream but immediately tell ourselves why the dream can’t happen.

We want love but distrust it when it comes near.

We want to be seen but hide everything that might allow somebody to actually see us.

And then shame enters.

Shame is a sneaky little locksmith.

It can take one painful experience and start installing locks everywhere.

One rejection becomes:

Nobody will choose me.

One mistake becomes:

I always mess everything up.

One betrayal becomes:

Nobody can be trusted.

One correction becomes:

I’m not good enough.

One changed plan becomes:

I failed.

And pretty soon we aren’t simply remembering what happened.

We are building an identity from it.

❤️🔐

But you are more than the worst thing somebody did to you.

You are more than the worst thing you did.

You are more than the thing that didn’t work.

You are more than the person who left.

You are more than the plan that changed.

You are more than the door you had to close.

And maybe there is something behind that door that deserves your love.

Not somebody else’s love first.

Yours.

Maybe you need to go looking for the part of yourself you locked away.

Not to drag them into the light.

Just to sit beside them.

🪑

Maybe say:

I know why you hid.

I know why you stopped trusting.

I know why you stopped dreaming.

I know why you needed this door.

But I came for you.

😭❤️

Because love does not always arrive carrying a crowbar.

Sometimes love arrives carrying a chair.

It sits.

It stays.

It tells the truth.

And eventually, when the person behind the door is ready…

love may become the key.

🔑

For those who share my faith, this is one reason God’s love means so much to me.

I don’t believe God only comes looking for the polished pieces of us.

He comes for the frightened ones.

The angry ones.

The questioning ones.

The grieving ones.

The ashamed ones.

The ones hiding behind doors we don’t even know how to open yet.

And sometimes we discover what we talked about yesterday:

God wasn’t standing outside waiting for us to become brave enough to open the door.

He was already there.

❤️

So today’s Heart Check isn’t asking you to unlock anything either.

Just look around your heart.

What did I lock away?

Why did I need to protect it?

Is that protection still serving me?

And maybe the hardest question:

Have I been calling something “gone” that is actually still inside me, waiting to be loved?

🔐❤️🔑🪑

Tomorrow we’re going to talk about one little word that can build an awfully big lock.

Should.

loving me some you
Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe

Beloveds,

A changed voice is still a voice.

That sentence is simple.

Living it is not.

When the way you communicate changes, people can become impatient.

They can finish for you.

They can misunderstand you.

They can listen to the difficulty instead of listening to the person.

And sometimes you can do the same thing to yourself.

I am learning not to make fluency the admission price for being heard.

My speech can take longer.

My words can arrive differently.

My voice can tire.

And I am still speaking.

Psalm 19:14 says, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” KJV

I believe God hears more than polish.

I believe He knows the meditation of my heart even when my mouth has to fight for the sentence.

If faith is not your language, hear this part clearly anyway:

You deserve enough time to communicate.

You deserve not to be disappeared because communication takes effort.

🔑 The key is not sounding like everybody else.

The key is being allowed to sound like yourself.

You matter to me.

And if somebody needs a little longer to say what they mean today, give them the dignity of the whole sentence.

Asking for A Friend,

Cassandra

#YourLifeMattersToMe

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