And the Planets Continue to Rotate...

I never purport to understand anyone's choices. It would be shameful of me to assume or presume.

I firmly believe everyone shares their glories with all (or should) and suffers their tragedies alone. Those tragedies will be judged and measured by someone else's standards. We all care on some level but, trust me, I'd walk away from the comparing. I actually have on many occasion.

A cat stuck in a tree or a baby in chemo? You decide. I have given up on comparisons. We all hold our personal tragedies as just that - personal.

Your suffering of a bad hair day will be measured. The long line at the store that is making you wait, will be measured. Traffic. Work. Your team losing. Your hair falling out. The next test result. The pain. The anxiety.

All measured to what the world is dishing out.

Someone starving in Africa, cares little for the dying patient in Hospice care. They can't afford the feelings. They have their own survival to worry about.

It doesn't always have to be to this extreme. We all do it. We all go under the knife, scope or needle and feel there is no greater tragic injustice. And really, at the time, there isn't.

But just walk away for a moment and try to feel someone else's tragedy. It can be easily dismissed when measured. You can also empathize and absorb shocking sobriety from it.

I am convinced that true courage comes from the situations we're put in. Some may seek out certain instances in order to be brave, but a vast majority have courage because the situation demands it. You can't hide. You have to take it with everyone watching.

One such act of true courage, and there are many, many examples surrounding us, comes from the patient documented in the Facebook Status above.

She is someone I confess to not knowing in high school very well. To be fair, I didn't know many very well.

Through the glory that makes Facebook actually useful for once, I have grown to know her story. I don't know details behind the details. I know enough.

I know that what I go through is measured to what she has gone through. I do it purposely this time. I do it as a reminder to me and anyone who may listen. I measure it because if I didn't know what courage was then, I know what it is now. I may not witness it ever again. It may never be measured in my lifetime.

I have measured now.

What I see, feel and hear is someone who can't don a cape and fly away. She can't wave a wand and grow a cure. She has no armor or stasis chamber to slow down the bullets.

She is armed with a slight flower of faith.

To me? It has been measured. And it is the human spirit beyond what I believed humanity could exhibit. Shame on me for that.

I do not pray. I do not cry.

Just sobering admiration.

I will say what will be blaspheme in the eyes of others. I've lived through it and I have never understood this lord's choices.

It is my hope her story as well as anyone else's never ends....