Say "I am sorry..."

...when you are wrong. Don't qualify, just say it and learn to mean it.

Over the 71.5 years that momma and daddy were married they perfected... (in my not so humble opinion) this concept/quality. I never once heard daddy say to momma... "I'm sorry, but..." Or momma to daddy either for that matter... Because by the time I came along into the family they had been married for 22 years... It boggles my mind to think of having a small child at my age but when my mother turned 50, my little sister was not quite 6... I had turned just 9 the previous December. There were 21 years between my oldest brother's and my youngest sister's births... My brother was on his mission when she was born... My oldest sister was already married, and my oldest nephew is only 15 months younger than sis... Momma literally spent 40 years raising her 8 children, because of our spacing. Something she simply accepted. To me the idea is nearly unfathomable... But one thing that I think was very interesting for the 4 younger children in our family to contemplate was that when they were young... momma and daddy were different people, than when the 4 older children were young.

By the time I could make heads or tails of adult conversations... my parents had become very good at recognizing when they messed up and apologizing for it. I didn't realize at the time how completely unusual this behavior was. I am not talking about apologizing to keep the peace... I am talking about genuinely learning to recognize when you are wrong, accepting your responsibility to make things right and doing all in your power to accomplish that goal.

The first step??? Learn to say "I am sorry" without making excuses for why something happened... because the whys very rarely matter... The reality is that there are ALWAYS valid reasons for why things happen or are done... I think we all recognize that... But, I am not talking about merely not trying to "save face"... I am talking about honestly digging deep into your heart and accepting that what needs to happen in many cases to make things right IS very simple, and we as imperfect beings muck it up with a lot of "buts..."

Let me give you what I think is a great example from my own life... A few years ago hubby and I had our first really serious argument... I remember that we had been married almost 10 years (so I guess it's actually been about 15 years) and honestly this WAS the first serious disagreement we had face as a couple in our marriage... The problems started with something I said... It was unthinking but not really on purpose... Hubby's feelings were hurt that I could be so callous... but he was big about it and when I apologized with a "but" on the end... he accepted my apology even though he could tell I wasn't REALLY sorry at the time... I was thinking to myself... "how could he possibly have 'heard' what I was saying in that manner?" I held back how I really felt and that was... that I didn't really believe that I owed him an apology. For 6 months this caused a minor but apparent rift between us... and then we finally worked through it... it was much more painful then it needed to be... and took so much longer (over a year of running into some underlying feelings in my heart...) But thank heavens that we had put this behind us before I got really sick.. because I am not sure either of us could have lived with ourselves if something were to happen to the other now and we had not learned how to achieve marital peace over the years...

We've have disagreements but rarely serious arguments these days because we learned a while back that life is too short to leave apologies for another day. I also say... on the other side of this equation... if someone apologies to you... GRACIOUSLY accept. EVERYONE will be MUCH happier!

I credit my parents for helping us to learn these 2 important lessons...