Are You Strong?

What makes someone strong? Does an incredible strength lie within us all, only to be called to the surface when life requires it? Or are some individuals just born with a stronger spirit? 
The saying, “God only gives you what you can handle.” is a popular one, but is it really true? 
I live in a circle of special needs parents. I witness unbelievable strength every day. I see families living apart from one other while their child fights for survival or recovery in a hospital far away from home. I see parents learning new medical procedures they must perform on their own children. I see parents struggle with the day-to-day care of a severely disabled child while compartmentalizing the unknown future of their child’s life expectancy. I see some parents even cope with the overwhelming grief of a child's death.
It is simply a different plane of existence, but one that becomes so normal for special needs parents that this intense level of stress is self-viewed as an ordinary life. 
I, myself, can’t really remember what life was truly like with a different level of stress. Overtime you acclimate to living with life and death realities, and your endurance improves exponentially. 
Does this make us stronger than anyone else? Although, we deal with seemingly ‘big issues’ day-to-day, we have marginalized them into normalcy. It is a mix of our increased threshold for stress, and a coping mechanism of survival that we are able to do this so well.

Back to the saying, “God only gives you what you can handle,” it would seem that everyone’s level of stress is perhaps just what “they can handle” and no more. The stress of taking care of healthy children, running errands, etc. might at first appear to be nonsensical to someone whom worries if their child will live the day, but to the people overwhelmed by ‘small’ stresses this is all they can handle. Or is it?
Would these same people be able to rise to the occasion? And even if they can’t or are never given the opportunity, can we still consider them “strong” for carrying on amid their own stresses? 
I think we can, and I think it offers special needs parents (and others dealing with ‘big’ stresses) an opportunity to broaden our concept of stress, survival, and personal successes. When we start rating each other’s lives and afflictions, we lose a bit of our humanity, compassion and perspective. 
It isn’t so much about grading the event or stress in someone’s life, but more about remembering how it relates to their threshold for it. We can all be “strong” in our own way, in our own time, in our own afflictions. It is our responsibility to our own growth to see the strength in others that we may, at first glance, think have an easier life than that of our own.