(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

I AM NOT a super hero.

I know that may come as a shock to some of you. Yet, I must confess that it is so. I am not Superman, nor Batman, nor even Spiderman. My deceitfulness in allowing you to believe that I was is hereby acknowledged. I am no super hero.

Could it be old age or a hopeful sign of maturity when a person realizes that they just cannot conquer the world as they had planned? The plans have gone awry. Castles stand unfinished. The paint for the masterpiece has hardened on the pallet. The bills are past due and the children are grown before we have finished raising them. All of it cannot be done. Our weakness meets us and we are too tired to return the grin.

OF LATE, I have experienced disappointment in accomplishing all that I had intended. In finances, education, family and spirituality, I am not where I had hoped to be at this point in my life.

Since separating from my second wife in 1997, finances have been tight. I am not complaining. There was a point in 1997 when I had lost everything, was out of work for a short time and had to start all over. I have come a considerable way since then. However, since the divorce was final in 1999 and I have had to pay significant child support, it often does not feel like a considerable improvement from those past years. Certainly I am doing my best, even working hard at supplementing my income with other business opportunities. But a person’s best is not always the same as their aspirations.

I cannot complain about the current state of my education. I have gone through computer programming school. Currently I am working towards my bachelors degree. Still I sense my weakness in these efforts, even as the super heroes in the cartoons often found themselves in worrisome situations and were often delayed in finding victory. Life happens. Children need you when you least expect it and at the times you had set aside for doing your homework. Migraines come to visit when you have fifty pages to read. Even your brakes go out on the way to take your algebra exam. “Could this be the end of our hero? Will he escape the kryptonite lined chamber? Stay tuned!”

Somehow, after the commercials, the good guys always win.

In my estimation, the area where weakness is most apparent to me is in my family. True, I have made a gargantuan effort to care for, provide for, love and teach my kids. Yet, it is in this effort that my weakness is most glaring to me because I know that I can never make up for the lack of attention of a mother. I cannot fully negate the effects of divorce. I have not been able to show my children what a true, loving, solid relationship or marriage is like. It’s not that I don’t desire to do that with all of my being. It just has not been in the cards to do so. I have had to go it alone. I have had to do my best. But I sometimes feel like an untrained man in the surgery room, running about putting band aids on potentially fatal wounds.

Then there is spirituality. I have been one who has professed to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, since I was 17. Who would know it today? Out here in the distant lands, does anyone recognize this wayward one as a child of the King? Is there any hint of royalty despite the ragged and tattered garb of a runaway? Does the homesickness show in my eyes? Here is weakness. If I had the strength I would have already set off for home.

I SUPPOSE it takes some amount of humility to admit weakness. With the right amount of adversity, a person will feel their own weakness and admit it. There comes a point when confessing weakness is no longer a shameful ordeal. Rather, it is a welcome liberation. There is relief. There is acceptance, not of defeat, but of reality. There is an understanding of the challenges and of the strength possessed to face them. Though at this point one could be tempted to despair, ultimately there is determination instead. It is better to limp or crawl the rest of the way than it is to merely lie on the side of the road defeated.

When a person comes to terms with weakness, they don’t have all the answers. They don’t have assurance of complete success. Instead, they have peace. They have an understanding that disappointment and death are two different things. They sit calmly and thoughtfully longer than others. They don’t rush to the scene of an accident with the rest of the crowd. They have been in enough wrecks in their lives to know what it’s like.

THIS is where I am right now. I have no super hero aspirations or illusions. I don’t have all the answers I need. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I wonder how I even had the strength to spell my name. Then I pray to awake in the morning and find that the last twenty years of my life were just a bad dream. Without fail, the announcer’s voice starts and I know I must rise to the occasion.

“Will our hero live to see another day? Tune in tomorrow, same time, same channel, to see your friendly neighborhood Snyderman in action!”

Weak or not, I can’t let my fans down!