Last week I messed up with my wife. The details are not important, but suffice to say I was in the dog house for breaking a household rule. Me being in trouble is not an unusual situation in the Bishop Bill household, and when I do apologize, my long suffering wife will say something like "That's what you said last time, but you keep doing it!"
I knew I needed something better in my apology. So I looked around, and decided to follow the example set by the Church Jesus Christ [1] After reading the official Newsroom article about the SEC debacle, I was ready with my wife!
I told her that I affirm my commitment to comply with the household rules, regret mistakes were made, and now consider the case closed.
Needless to say, I did not reach resolution with the SEC wife. In fact it made matters worse! How could this be? I was being as transparent as I knew how, and I never tried to hide anything from anybody!
I regrouped, went back to my wife, and said "I'm so sorry, I was wrong, I'm sorry you lost trust in me, and I will try to regain that trust by my future actions". While my wife was still upset, she thanked me for a "real" apology, and we have moved on.
Have any of you readers tried to follow the Church's example on how to apologize? How did they turn out for you?
[1] Talk by Elder Kevin Hamilton: Elder Hamilton continued to explain that he will sometimes hear members say they do not support certain Church policies or do not agree with the way the Church does something. "Could I suggest an alternative approach?" he asked. "Substitute the word 'Savior' or 'Lord' or 'Jesus Christ' in place of 'the Church.' ... For me, personally, that seems to put a very different perspective on things."
Image by Alexa from Pixabay
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