The Power of a Tiny Win

Our apartment will never make a minimalist Instagram page.

It’s small. It’s full of medical gear. There are probably more pill bottles than decorative accents. This is “mission HQ,” not a model home. But in this cramped little space, we’ve started collecting something I didn’t know I’d ever be this grateful for: tiny wins.

Not miracle cures. Not before-and-after transformations. Just small, stubborn moments of progress that somehow keep the lights on inside our hearts.

Here are a few from this past week. Maybe they’ll help you spot yours.

1. The walk from the couch to the bed

A few months ago, the distance from our couch to our bed might as well have been a marathon. Getting Traci there meant full assists, careful turns, and my brain running through a checklist of “don’t let her fall, don’t twist the tube, don’t push too hard.”

This week, she stood up from the couch, steadied herself, and walked to the bed on her own.  She held my arm for balance but really, she did all the work herself. 

It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t glamorous. It was maybe fifteen or twenty steps. But it was her legs, her body cooperating, her choosing to move instead of being moved. I watched her climb into bed, pull the covers up, and then crash like a light switch had been flipped.

Encouraging and terrifying, all at once.

That’s what progress looks like sometimes: beautiful and fragile in the same frame. The win isn’t that everything is suddenly “back to normal.” The win is that today, you could do one small thing you couldn’t do last month.

If you’re in your own hard chapter, don’t wait for the big cinematic comeback to celebrate. Look for the fifteen steps. They count.

2. Laughing at America’s Funniest Videos

Our couch has seen some stuff: meds, tears, midnight worries, naps that weren’t really restful.

The other night, it saw something else: Traci laughing at America’s Funniest Videos.

She was upright. She was engaged. And something about people getting lightly smacked by piñatas and slipping off trampolines was hitting just right. For about thirty minutes, it felt like our couch wasn’t a medical command center. It was just a place where a husband and wife sat and laughed at dumb TV together.

It’s easy to overlook moments like that because they don’t fix anything. The diagnoses are still there. The appointments are still on the calendar. But joy doesn’t always show up with solutions. Sometimes it just pulls up a seat in the middle of the mess and reminds you you’re still human.

If your life feels heavy, don’t feel guilty for laughing at something silly. That kind of laughter isn’t denial; it’s oxygen.

3. Errands that feel like a date

Yesterday we did something incredibly ordinary: errands.

First was Friar Tux for me, so I could get fitted for a suit for our daughter Kelli’s upcoming wedding.  And secondly, we went to Skechers for her so she could get a couple pairs of new socks. Wheelchair, parking lot navigation, all the logistics in the background. But here’s what stood out to me—Traci was chatty. Present. Along for the ride.

By the time we got home, she was wiped and needed a multi-hour nap. That’s our reality. But for that little window, we were just a married couple out doing stuff together. No grand vacation. No elaborate plan. Just moving through the world side by side.

Sometimes the win isn’t that you made it somewhere epic. It’s that you made it to Target. Or the grocery store. Or the tux shop.

If you’ve got someone you love, don’t underestimate the power of a “boring” errand run together. Normal life might feel small, but when it’s been threatened, it becomes one of the biggest gifts you can imagine.

4. An app that organized the chaos

I used to carry Traci’s med schedule in my head like some kind of weird superpower. Ask me what and when and I could rattle it off—until this last hospital stay piled on a dozen more drugs and suddenly the list wasn’t a list anymore, it was a Rubik’s cube. Some meds are once a day, some twice, some three, four, even six times. Who gets what and when was a mess, and I needed help before the plates started falling.

Enter into the equation an app called Medisafe. I typed every med in, set the times and issued reminders in my phone to take what and when, added notes, and watched the chaos turn into a clear timeline. Reminders pop up, nothing gets missed, and I’m not living in a constant fear of skipping something important. Can’t remember when the last pain med was, no problem…open it up and it’s not just due in 20 minutes but so is a steroid. Better still, I shared it with Kelli and Vicki and now everyone’s looking at the same playbook. It’s small, practical, and boring—three things I’ve come to worship when life gets loud.

If you’re juggling a lot, put the list outside your head. Systems aren’t glamorous, but they give you back your brain.

5. A simple question about Disneyland

Sometime yesterday, in between meds and TV and the normal chaos of our little apartment, Traci looked over at me and dropped a five–word question that cut through everything else: “When’s our next Disney day?” No big speech. No agenda. Just quiet hope wrapped in a simple sentence.

We don’t have a date on the calendar yet. Her body is still unpredictable. Some days she can make it to Friar Tux and Skechers, and some days the walk from the couch to the bed feels like a marathon. But the fact that she’s still asking, still dreaming about Main Street Music and Magic and being out in the world together—that’s a win I’ll take every time.

Here’s what I’m learning: sometimes hope doesn’t look like a grand plan. Sometimes it sounds like, “When can we go back to the place we love?” You don’t have to know the exact day. You just have to let yourself believe there might be one.

If you’re buried in a hard season, it’s okay to hold one simple, maybe‑someday dream. A favorite restaurant. A road trip. A beach day. A Disney day. Letting yourself look forward, even a little, doesn’t erase the reality you’re living in. It just reminds you that this chapter isn’t the whole story.

None of these moments fixed our situation. They didn’t cure anything. But they stacked up—one walk to the bed, one night of laughing at dumb videos, one errand run, one clutch app, one question about Disney—and together they reminded me: our life isn’t only made of big, shiny mountaintop days. It’s also built out of tiny wins from a cramped apartment.

And for right now, those tiny wins are more than enough to keep us going.