Much Ado About Nothing

I have a confession to make. I’m not perfect.

Now, that won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. In fact, it won’t come as a surprise to anyone at all. I’m not even surprised.

So why is it that when something happens that’s less than perfect, my mind goes into overdrive? I think that deep down; I want to be perfect although I know that I’m not. I have high standards for myself. I’ll give others the benefit of the doubt when they have a rough day, but I’d prefer that they didn’t see my rough day.

It’s scary to be vulnerable enough with people that they see your rough side. I’d prefer others to see the polished side.

You might suspect that I had one of those moments this week. Actually, I had the same thing twice. I dealt with it once and then it jumped back up at me a second time. (Apologies to the two ladies that caught the brunt of it!)

I thought that I’d share my process of working through it with you. It might help you to know that when you have those moments, you’re not alone.

What happened, you ask? I forgot to say something. Yip, I know. It’s really not that big a deal and yet, I made it a big deal. Twice.

How did I work through it, you ask? Well, first of all I checked my intention, I checked the response of the person it affected and then I took them at their word.

I reflected on the omission and I asked myself – was there anything behind that? My honest answer was no, there wasn’t. I simply forgot.

Okay, so I made a mistake. How was I to deal with that? I have asked that question many times over the years. The conclusion that I have come to is that I have done my part, however imperfectly. I choose to trust that something of that is going to bear good fruit. I prayed about it and handed the burden of my mistake to God and asked him to use my mistake for good. I let it go and allowed myself forgiveness.

I apologised to and checked the response of the person that might have been offended. She reasoned it the same way that I had in my mind and she was okay with it. That was a relief.

But, what if she had been offended? All we can do when that happens is show genuine concern for what has happened and try to repair the damage as much as possible. We cannot change how the other person responds.

We can express our apology, but that is no guarantee that it will be accepted. If it’s not, we still have to process for ourselves. No amount of begging or punishing ourselves will change that person’s heart. Forgiveness is a heart issue. Perhaps that is why we are to pray for our enemies. Being an enemy is an issue of the heart.

Then, I took her at her word. She was not offended. She was not holding a grudge. Because she was not offended, I had no basis to hold myself hostage and so I chose to let it go. I made a mistake. That is okay. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time.

The temptation was to hold myself hostage and beat myself up. But what would be the foundation of that? Pride. Fear of rejection. I would be punishing myself for making a mistake.

You might resonate with the punishment idea. But when a young child falls over, we don’t feel the need to punish them. Why do we punish ourselves when we fall short of an ideal?

Okay, what if she had been upset? Well, I could come up with a plan to say it a different way or to find a remedy. But if she took offence, I would still have to forgive myself. It might take some processing, but when we know that we had no intent to harm, we must learn to let it go. The emotions flying left, right and centre are not always pleasant, especially when someone chooses not to forgive us. That’s when we have to let it go over and over, until we can let it go and not pick it up again.

So, I forgot to say something and panicked that it might have been taken badly, but it wasn’t. There was nothing to see here. And yet I spent a couple of hours processing this very uneventful event. A couple of days later, I panicked again and went through it again, quicker this time.

Ugh. I roll my eyes at the fuss I made over nothing. And yet, it was an emotional rollercoaster. Twice.

To work through it, I checked my intention, I checked the response of the person it affected and then I took them at their word.

It can be scary to be vulnerable with people. I’d prefer others to see a polished version of me and yet the reality is that I’m not polished.

Depth of relationship entails seeing the good and the bad in a person. I give others the benefit of the doubt when they have a rough day, but I’d prefer that they didn’t see my rough day. Perhaps I can reframe this drama as an opportunity to be real.

I’m not perfect. No one ever said that I was. I choose to be okay with that.