He was the greatest warrior who ever lived

His name was Oscar Eriksen, he was known to all of Denmark and the surrounding Isles as the greatest warrior who ever lived. 

Today he was returning from a hard fought victory on behalf of the empire a broken man. 

What was to be a joyous return to his wife and not yet born child was now a source of great fear in him. 

Rather than a companion he was now returning to his wife an invalid, another body to care for. 

Had the king not refused it would have been a warriors death for Oscar, he now laid on his back strapped to half an oak tree with little ability to move from the neck down. 

His wife Christiana welcomed him with open arms. She knew her job was not to restore his body. It was to restore his heart. 

In Oscar she had chosen a role model for her children and she knew he would become that again. 

Strength she knew wasn't a demonstration of physical strength, that was merely an external validation of consistently demonstrating mental strength in a physical way. 

True strength is in the courage to start where you are and consistently persist in the direction of choosing without distraction. 

Oscar had been set to retire to run his farm at the end of the last battle but now he faced the greatest battle of his life. 

For another month he led on his back as his muscles and his pride wasted away. 

Christiana tended to him and fed him and turned him as best she could. His external wounds were now healed but little movement had return. He tried so hard to sit, to roll over, to get up but the strength wouldn't come. 

Spring arrived and with that the sound of a new baby crying and laughing filled the house. Some of the joy in Oscars heart was restored. 

Christiana would place little Annaphia down on the floor next to Oscar and they would smile and laugh at each other as she tried to pull his nose and ears and hair. 

She desperately wanted to try and move. She would lift her head and turn it left and right. Oscar copied her playing and smiling. Soon they were both on their fronts lifting their heads and holding them up.

Next came the arm and leg forced rolling over. They both pushed as hard as they could and flopped onto their backs. 

Annaphia showed no shame, why should she?

What she could do was what she could do. She moved in the way she was able and mastery of each little movement grew into the next and then the next. 

Oscar saw this in her and laughed a booming laugh that hadn't been heard in months. 

It wasn't his lack of strength that kept him on his back he realised, it was his ego. 

Day after day they rolled, then dragged themselves along the floor, they scrabbled across the hard floor. 

Word started to spread through the town of the once great warrior now a childs play thing. But Christiana never showed anything but pride as she watched her man show the true measure of his strength. 

He could hear the laugher as people passed the once great mans house and sniggered. Still he continued rolling and crawling and now coasting. 

More time passed and as it passed news travelled. 

The once great OSCAR the brave, the most fearsome man who ever lived. Now a punchline. 

A small group of men began to plot and scheme to kill the great man and take his land. 

One night long after dark they broke into the farm via the room where Annaphia was sleeping and quickly discovered what strength really was as they were met with the full force of Oscar shield crashed down upon them sending them tumbling back out of the window. The men fled as quickly as they could not quite believing what had happened. 

Word travelled fast. The great man had never stopped being great. But he was stronger now than ever before. 

Freedom and strength are an inside job.
(Points at head) 

Ed Ley