Battling Your Inner Supergirl

You are not Supergirl. Supergirl is a myth, a made-up DC Comic heroine. You will never be Supergirl. Now that we have that out in the open, let’s talk more about how to fight our inner notions that we are or can be Supergirl.

Supergirl debuted as a counterpart to Superman in 1959, one year after my dad graduated high school. Although she barely ranks in the top 100 of comic book heroes, she must have been pretty cool to be revived after almost 60 years from the time she was created.  When she was created, our world was a different place. Women were seen differently. Family and gender was seen differently. In the 1950’s, there was a Leave it to Beaver mentality for women. So, maybe there was a need to create a woman who could battle alongside men and fight for the world’s injustices.

No matter the reason Supergirl was originally created, we are again in the age of Supergirl. With a new show on a major television network, Supergirl is again in everyone’s mind. And, while most of us might not want to run and jump onto the wings of airplanes or stop of truck with our bare hands, or shoot beams out of our eyes, I think many of us desire to be Supergirl.

We want to be able to do it all. Be beautiful, be successful at our careers, have thriving relationships, have a stylish home, have incredibly cute, talented, and smart children, be insanely creative, and have a booming home business, etc. At the beginning of each day, it might be easy for us to get up and hop in the shower and read our Bible before the children awake, breakfast may be cutely designed pancakes in the shape of some cartoon character. The children’s lunches may be perfectly situated and have a sweet note included in their Bento box. We then waltz out the door in our designer heels and succeed at our high-end corporate job. We come home to a husband who loves our cooking, and we put our children to bed after a full day of school, soccer practice, and a ballet recital. Then, we sit down and work on our personal home business before retiring for the evening.

If that is you, congrats on being Supergirl. I wouldn’t say doing any of these things is wrong — but I think doing all of them well is so difficult — and maybe not really necessary. But, media has created a world around us that makes us believe that we need to be Supergirl. So, we try. We pursue perfection, heroine status, and unbelievable feats of motherhood and womanhood.

But, what happens when sickness strikes your family, or the school bus is late and you have to take the kids to school, making you late for your job. Or your husband goes out of town for business (or you have to go) and the perfect schedule has to get rearranged. What happens when the cake burns in the oven or the buttercream doesn’t go perfectly on the cake that you’ve been wanting to showcase on Instagram for your son’s second birthday (that may have happened recently in our home).

We have to admit to ourselves that we aren’t Supergirl. Nor do we need to be. When we think we have to be Supergirl, what we are trying to be is our own Savior.

One sermon I heard years ago was talking about our need for sleep and how reminds us that we aren’t God and we need a Savior. If we trick ourselves into believing that we are Supergirl, then we might trick ourselves into believing we doesn’t need rescuing. And no matter how high our heels or cute our kids, we all need rescuing.

So our help in battling our need to be Supergirl, is to remember that we need a Savior. And thankfully, December brings the celebration of the Incarnation of Jesus, the true Superhero.