day twenty three: making up is hard to do

Jayme Thompson

“I’m sorry” are two of the most important words we ever say. They preserve one of the most important things we have – our relationships. If you can’t apologize, you will lose a lot of people during your life. Pride is a very lonely problem.

Sometimes apologies are really exercises in pride. We sometimes begin the process of reconciling because we know confessions and admissions will lead back to the narrative of the event in question. These conversations go like this, “I’m sorry I said that to you, I really am, but you can’t act the way you did.” See the motive? The moral high ground is a lonely place too.

True repentance means just standing there in your wrongness, acknowledging that you are indeed wrong. It’s painful, it’s humiliating, it’s final, but it’s not lonely. Compassion loves vulnerability, and it was compassion that we were seeking all along. We acted out for attention and then we kept making our case for the behavior because we longed to be understood. It’s one of those tricky things life only lets you see in the rearview mirror. We must become good repenters.

This truth exists at it truest as we relate to our heavenly Father. Pride isolates us. We have no moral high ground to claim. We must leave our excuses behind. God esteems the meek and the lowly. We must acknowledge our failures honestly and thoroughly. Compassion loves vulnerability.

“For this is what the high and lofty One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.’” Isaiah 57:15