While out picking up prescriptions for my kids, I stop at a local burger joint to grab some burgers to go for my family waiting at home.

I am sitting at the counter waiting for my food and look around at the restaurant bustling with people, laughter, life. I find this “victim complex” starting to form in my thoughts: “These people have no idea.” It’s easy to feel this way. Alone in the battles you face. Weary from the challenges. Looking at others doing life through jealousy-green-tinted glasses. Look at them, eating burgers, coming in from kids soccer matches, meeting friends for lunch and they have no idea how lucky they are get to have their Saturday.

Just an ordinary Saturday.

I take captive this false thought as it attempts to manipulate my mind into a victim mode.

First, of course they do have some idea. We ALL have our own stories. I do not have magic insight into the life’s and battles of the people around me. Perhaps, at one table there is a mother longing to hear from her estranged adult child who struggles with addiction. Maybe, the table of ladies laughing and eating together are meeting to encourage one of them who just received a frightening diagnosis of breast cancer. True, they may have no idea my current situation and the demands of caring for children with special needs when they are sick, but I also should not assume I have any idea of their situations and demands. Also they have no idea the joy my children bring me and how much I love that we get to do life together.

In the midst of the chaos, the sickness, the longing for reconciliation, recovery, divorce or whatever we are facing; we take kids to soccer matches, we pick up dry cleaning, get groceries and we meet friends for lunch. We bravely do the ordinary, even in the middle of extraordinary circumstances.

Because meanwhile, we all keep doing life and sometimes we stop for burgers.

Just an extraordinary Saturday.

For ALL of us.