"You Didn't Know Me When..."

Working at a children's hospital, I have the opportunity to work with many families as a part of my job.  Whether they have come to be in the care of our hospital because of a birth onset condition or a traumatic accident, I am often struck by the fact that, for many of them, life was remarkably different before the moment that brought them to us.  Quite simply, I didn't know them when...I just get to know them now.

I think about this often as I get to know them, hear and oftentimes, help share, their stories.  Their story, just like all of ours, is a changing, evolving one.  And I am sure, for many of them, the story they find themselves living certainly isn't one they ever expected to be cast in.

On a related note, I was talking to a friend of mine about blogging recently, why we do it, who reads our blogs, whose blogs we read, etc. 

As I thought about it, I realized that most of the blogs I follow fall into two groups.  There are the people I know and the people I don't.  The people I know are friends and family who simply happen to have blogs.  I read because I care.  And I care enough to be happy to read the funny kid stories and mundane details.  Hey, after all, mundane is good.

And then there is the second group.  Who are they?  How did I find them?  Well, it is usually one thing leading to another.  But most all of them have come to my attention because something remarkable has happened in their lives that, even though I don't know them, has caused me to care. 

And what causes me to care, sadly enough, has been that many of them have had some horrible tragedy unfold in their lives.  Often it's a part of their story in which I can see a part of myself.  I can imagine, "That could easily have been me."

While that one moment or life event first caught people's attention (including mine), it was how the responded to it, wrote about it, how they have shared their grief, coping, and moving forward that kept me reading. In particular, what can be so compelling about those blogs are when they were in existence before that moment occurred.  Because, while I didn't know them then, and quite frankly, still don't personally know them, I am able to go back and piece parts of it together.  It kind of makes you feel like, to some small degree, you did know them then.

In both my work and in my blog following, there is a common thread.  You never know.  What were once the mundane details of life can be turned on their head in an instant.  For now, therefore, I am happy and thankful and blessed that the bulk of my life are day to day, rather mundane details.  I'll be happy to battle sewers and minor illnesses and bad car brakes.  Because you never know.