When Your Mind Won’t Move On

There are two types of people in this world.

The kind of people who apologize once.
And then there are the kind who believe no apology is complete without a follow-up text, a follow-up to the follow-up text, and one final, I promise this is the last time I’m bringing this up.

And then, for good measure, they take one last lap around the apology track. Just to make sure the first three apologies landed.

I could teach a master class on the second type.
Beating dead horses is one of my specialties.

This past week I had the opportunity to judge the Miss Texas pageant. Somewhere between the interviews, hours together, and nonstop conversations, the judges went from strangers to kindred spirits. It felt a little like adult summer camp. And if you know me at all, you may know that I’ve been obsessed with summer camp since I was eight years old.

Everything was going perfectly.
Until one morning I became convinced I had accidentally offended one of the other judges. Now, mind you, I had no proof of that.
They never acted offended. I just decided they were. 
I had turned a possibility into a certainty.

My mind was working overtime. So I apologized.
They smiled and immediately said, Oh my goodness, you’re completely fine.
Most people would hear that and move on with their lives.
 I, however, heard  that as,  Please continue apologizing.

By 10:00 that morning I’d drafted a follow-up text.
I’ve been thinking about our conversation, and I just wanted to tell you again how sorry I am. I really meant it.

Then I thought, A text feels so impersonal.
So I asked the hotel if they had stationery because clearly a handwritten note would communicate the depth of my remorse.

At one point I actually caught myself wondering if I should apologize for apologizing so much. Somewhere around apology number four, I’d managed to create a brand-new problem that didn’t exist when this whole thing started.

Most people really mean it when they say, You’re fine.
They’re ready to move on and they are wondering why we haven’t.

How many relationships stay stuck because one person can’t accept the forgiveness they’ve already been given?
Someone forgives us. We accept the words but reject the freedom that came with them.

Then we spend the next six months acting guilty every time we see them.
However, once we start carrying shame into a relationship, it changes the way we show up. 

We second-guess ourselves, overthink conversations, and spend so much energy trying to make up for what happened that we never give the relationship a chance to simply be normal again.

When we truly accept forgiveness, the relationship has a chance to become something bigger than the mistake. At some point, we have to trust that when someone says, I forgive you, they actually mean it.

There is a difference between remembering what happened and continuing to live as though you’re still guilty. At some point, we have to stop proving we’re sorry and start believing we’re forgiven

I think that’s true with God too. We ask Him to forgive us, and He does.
Then we keep carrying the guilt, replaying the mistake, and defining ourselves by something He has already forgiven. We continue acting as though we’re still on trial when the verdict has already been given.  

The invitation is to start living like we’ve actually been forgiven.
Living forgiven requires us to believe people when they say, I forgive you, and to believe God when He says, You’re forgiven. Only then can yesterday stop overshadowing today, making room for a future that isn’t held hostage by the past.