Posts Tagged: apologies

“GETTING RID OF BIG BUTS AND MAKING AMENDS”

On November 11, 2016 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

A good friend of mine reminded me the other day that, if I was really going to make amends to someone I had wronged, I needed not to tell the person what he had done to provoke my wrong.

Ouch!  Whoever said that truth hurts was telling the truth.  Truth does hurt—a lot.  However, there is the pain of falsehood, and there is the pain of truth.  Falsehood causes us a pain that quickly makes us numb.  Truth is another word for growing pains.

The problem is that I tend to have a lot of big buts.  No, the last word in the preceding sentence is not misspelled.

I try to apologize for something wrong I’ve done, BUT I also try to explain my actions as being caused by what the other person did to me.  That is not an amends; it’s an explanation.

So, I’ve decided that what I really need to do is to simply say, “I was wrong when I did/said ______________ about you/to you.  I am sorry, and will try to do better.”

In other words, I need to have a “butectomy.”  You’ve never heard the word before?  Me neither!  I just made it up.

The suffix “-ectomy” means “excision.”  The word “but” means . . ., well, you know what that word means, don’t you?

I have often pointed out that we always put the real things, the things we really believe, on the right side of our but.  Now, I need to apply this to my buts.

I was fudging with the title of this post.  I spoke of getting rid of big buts.  That is not enough when I’m trying to make amends.  I need to get rid of all buts if I want to give someone a genuine amend or apology.

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