I’ve learned that everyone has a superpower.
And no, I don’t mean “can parallel park on the first try” or “can eat one chip and stop.” I mean the thing… that invisible current inside you that hums when you’re doing what you were made to do.
Some people discover it early. Others spend fifty years confusing it with everything.
Erin, for example, has the world’s most advanced BS detector. Military-grade. Laser-focused. She can sniff out bad intentions through walls, fog, and polite small talk. If discernment were an Olympic sport, she’d be sponsored by NASA.
Meanwhile, my BS meter?
Bought it at the Dollar Store.
Missing batteries.
Probably left it in the car.
I’ve learned not to argue with hers. Because here’s the truth… Erin is always right. Every. Single. Time.
Once I thought she misjudged someone. She didn’t.
Once I thought she was being dramatic. She wasn’t.
At this point, if Erin says the Pope has bad vibes, I’m lighting a candle and stepping back slowly.
That’s her gift.
She sees people clearly.
Mine?
I feel them.
I walk into a room and absorb the emotional weather like it’s my job. Someone’s anxious? My chest tightens. Someone’s grieving? I feel it in my ribs.
It’s like my soul’s Bluetooth pairs with every broken heart in range.
When I was a kid, I hated it.
Other kids got to just be. I was out here carrying feelings that weren’t mine like a backpack I couldn’t take off.
If I hurt someone, I didn’t just apologize… I carried their disappointment for days like it had signed a lease in my chest.
It’s exhausting, being this porous.
I’ve cried at commercials, Pixar movies, and once during a Coldplay song in the produce aisle.
In my defense, The Scientist came on.
For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me.
Turns out, nothing was wrong.
There was just nowhere for it to go.
That sensitivity… that emotional sonar… became the way I see people. Hear them. Stay when things get uncomfortable.
At work, it meant sitting with parents, teachers, kids… without rushing to fix what wasn’t ready to be fixed.
At home, it meant being the first to soften.
The first to reach back after things got quiet.
It’s my superpower.
And like most superpowers, it comes with a cost.
A few months ago, one of my daughters and I had an argument.
Nothing dramatic. Just one of those ordinary father-daughter collisions where two people who love each other are both convinced they’re making perfect sense.
She moved on by dinner.
I carried it for three days.
Replaying every word. Every look. Wondering if I’d been too hard, not hard enough, or somehow both.
At one point, I walked past her room and heard her laughing with her friends.
And I realized…
I was the only one still having the argument.
Some people can sit comfortably in tension.
I feel it in my bones.
Because feeling everything doesn’t just mean you love deeply.
It means you hurt longer.
You forgive before you’re ready.
You stay in rooms you probably should’ve left.
For most of my life, I wished I could turn it down.
Feel less.
Care less.
Carry less.
I thought maybe life would be easier if I could grow a little thicker skin.
Maybe it would have been.
But I’m not sure it would have been better.
Because every meaningful thing in my life—my marriage, my daughters, my friendships, my faith—entered through the very door I spent years trying to close.
Maybe that’s the strange thing about our superpowers.
They rarely feel like superpowers while we’re carrying them.
Sometimes they feel like weaknesses.
Inconveniences.
The parts of ourselves we keep trying to fix.
Until one day we realize…
the thing that made life harder was also the thing that allowed us to experience it more fully.
So I don’t want to feel less anymore.
I want to notice.
I want to stay.
I want to love people enough that sometimes it hurts.
Because we were made to feel.
To notice.
To love.
And maybe the parts of ourselves we’ve spent a lifetime trying to get rid of…
are the very parts we were supposed to give away.
❤️
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
— Ezekiel 36:26
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