Have you ever wanted to be a superhero?
Most of my 23 years on this earth I have felt something like a superhero. I don’t fly (although I try). I don’t move objects with my mind. And I couldn’t take a bullet without dying (or being severely injured). But I’ve tried to save many people in many ways throughout the years.
I call myself a Christian-from-the-cradle, and though I’ve never tried to convert people to my own belief system and religion, I do feel like God has guided me since I was a little girl to be a sort of savior to those less fortunate or in trouble or just plain lonely and sad or lost.
The greatest lesson I’ve learned recently though is that sometimes the person you need to save is yourself.
In my current book selection, the main character Eddie (a soldier) learns the real origin of his battle wound. His leg was shot, crippling him for the rest of his life. From that point forward, he had to walk with a cane. This injury made him feel lost, depressed, and worthless. He blamed a lot of the failures and shortcomings throughout his life on that one wound. However, he figured that the bullet was fired from enemy lines. But he was wrong.
When Eddie was shot, he was trying to run into a blazing building, convinced he saw a figure moving inside. He wanted to save that moving figure, whoever it was. Meanwhile, his Captain and his fellow soldiers were trying to get him to leave the area, as it was about to be invaded and bombed. They knew Eddie would die if you went inside that burning building.
However, Eddie was not listening. He was determined to get into that fire, so much so that he nearly knocked out one of his fellow soldiers who tried to physically stop him. He felt drawn to the figure he saw. He swore he could save whoever it was in that building, that he could salvage them in some way.
He kept walking and walking and walking. No hesitation. Until he got so close to the blaze that he could barely see as he caught on fire and a bullet shot straight into his leg, bringing him to his knees as the other soldiers then dragged him out to safety.
In this book, Eddie’s Captain confesses a few decades later that he was the one who shot his leg.
Eddie becomes furious. Why would his Captain do such a thing? This wound that he had all his life, that he felt had kept him from living a fulfilling life, was all a purposeful action from a man on his side.
Why did the Captain do this to one of his soldiers? You might ask.
The Captain gave Eddie this simple response:
“I shot your leg to save your life.”
You see, the Captain made all of his soldier’s one promise – they would never be left behind. The Captain saw Eddie walking into the fire, knowing full well he would die if he walked much further. Therefore, the Captain sacrificed this man’s leg in order to pull him out of the fire and ultimately save his life. If the Captain didn’t shoot his leg, Eddie would have never married the love of his life or touched the lives around him before old age would take him to heaven.
Recently, I’ve found myself in the same position as Eddie. I was a soldier walking confidently into a burning building, determined to save the moving figures I saw. I was convinced that they were among the flames with open arms ready for me to rescue them – from loneliness or insecurity, from abusive families, from mental illness, from themselves, from anything. I didn’t know if they were even on my side. But I did know that I wanted to save them, even if I got burned in the process.
And just like Eddie, no one was going to stop me. But before I lost myself in a fire, I was shot with a painful epiphany sent straight from God through the skies on some beautiful sunny day.
You see something inside me sparked. That day, I was doing something that I do on a pretty regular basis – talking to God. I was sharing all of my emotions, everything that I truly wanted for myself, as I dealt with a painful situation. Even if you don’t believe in God, saying these things out loud to yourself can make you realize what you’re not doing to get to the place you want to be. It was this conversation with God that made me learn, like Eddie soon learned in his own story, that sometimes we’re put through painful things to stop us. Those moments when we’re shot down by some painful bullet before we enter an abyss that could swallow us whole… those moments are moments we should treasure. They force us to take another look at our lives. They allows us to think again. They allow us to remember what we’re worth. And we’re worth much more than chasing after a fire where we will be the only casualties and where the people we wanted to save are sadly still not savable.
This experience stopped me. It saved me.
Some might ignore these experiences, making future decisions that only assure deep sadness – nearly losing themselves in the process. But if you let these experiences do so, they’ll protect you. They’ll hurt like no other, but when you come out alive (and trust me, you WILL come out alive and smiling one day) all the wisdom and the strength you’ve acquired will be worth it.
Because things don’t just happen out of luck or by chance - they happen for a reason. They happen so we learn to love ourselves enough to know when to walk away from a burning fire, when to walk away from someone we care for but simply can’t save, when to walk away for ourselves, when to walk away from whatever is hurting us to look within and be the superhero for our own hearts, to love ourselves for everything we already are, when no one else will.
So I ask y’all to do something you may have never considered before… whether I know you, knew you, or may never know you… I ask y’all to use the superhero within you for someone most worthy of it – yourself.
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