Are you Superwoman?

The last 2 weeks, we have looked at the concept of Sabbath, Biblically, and then practically how to implement it into our lives. If you missed the last two posts here they are: Part 1, http://claritywithcharity.com/?p=20 and Part 2, http://claritywithcharity.com/?p=77

Today we continue our series on Sabbath by looking at a specific portion of Anna’s question. You can find her original question here: http://claritywithcharity.com/?p=20

I am so thankful for her vulnerability when she shared, “It’s easy to feel like I’ve failed everyone by the time I’ve laid my head to rest at night.”

I think a lot of women fall asleep at night feeling this way, whether they are Moms, professionals, wives, church leaders, volunteer workers ect…I know that I used to fall asleep at night feeling like I had failed someone during the day.

Before I was a blogger, I worked in “helping professions” – these are professions such as teaching, advising, nursing, physical therapists, counselors, social workers, human resource workers, managers, full time ministry workers, even baristas! (believe me I spent a summer pulling shots and often my hair because of the problems people would share with me while I made their triple foam, extra shot, light on whip, mocha frappe thing).

Even if you are not in one of these professions, you may still go to bed at night feeling inadequate because of your personality and how you naturally interact with people around you. You may be an “intuitive feeler,” find out by taking a free Meyers Briggs test here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp I am an ENFJ, sometimes I test ENFP What are you?

You also probably have the spiritual gift of mercy. Find out if you do here: http://www.spiritualgiftstest.com/index.html

My top three were Faith, Mercy and Pastor. What were yours?

Often I resented having the spiritual gift of mercy because by 5 p.m. I felt like:

I just lost my job, my dog had died, I had been diagnosed with an incurable disease and would soon fail out of college and spend 20 years flipping burgers. This was because I had just heard those problems from friends, co-workers, students, oh… and the person in the grocery store line that told me their life story. This can be difficult for me because of my mercy gifting. Having a gift of mercy means that when someone tells me about their struggles I can feel their pain…

I am not just hearing the story of you being in a sinking ship without a lifejacket and rowing with one oar, I am in the boat with you, using my hand to paddle while the icy rains beats at my cheek. If you relate to this feeling of experiencing the stress of others so deeply that it actually affects you mentally and physically then you MUST ask yourself one very important question:

DO I THINK I AM SUPERWOMEN or SUPERMAN?

Get over your Superwomen Complex. You may or may not have this, but I would like to suggest that you could be suffering from a savior mentality. I know I was for years. I realized that I could make every practical preparation in the world for a Sabbath but until I worked through my Superwomen complex I would never be able to mentally rest on my Sabbath.

Let me describe to you what I mean by a Superman complex: You think you HAVE to rescue and save people from their problems and ultimately their sin. You believe deep down that if you don’t text them back right away, have coffee with them, pray for them that something horrible will happen to them. They will not follow Jesus, they will fall into a lifetime of drugs, or think that you don’t care! And this thought process haunts you everyday, because you feel like you are letting people down and you can never spend enough time with the hurting, you can never give enough good advice to the searching and you don’t have enough love to heal the broken…that’s why I spent so many years feeling exhausted and so not enough…until one day I realized

I WAS RIGHT!!!!!

I couldn’t spend enough time with the hurting

I couldn’t give enough good advice to the searching

I couldn’t meet everyone’s expectations.

I would disappoint people.

I don’t have enough love to heal the broken

I WAS NOT ENOUGH TO SAVE ANYONE! BECAUSE I CAN’T SAVE ANYONE! ONLY JESUS CAN SAVE PEOPLE.

This was a major revelation to me. I was human, Jesus was not! I had limitations of time, space and energy, Jesus did not! I am not perfect, Jesus is! I don’t always know what to do or say, Jesus does!

WHAT A RELIEF!

I lost about 100 pounds of emotional weight that day…..Talk about a great diet!

Maybe you need to go on the Superwoman diet too and lose some emotional weight, in the next post, I am going to share with you how I got over my Superwoman complex.

Can you relate to the above, how? What was your personality type and spiritual gifts? Do you think your God given make-up could contribute to having a superwoman complex?