I Was Wrong, I'm Sorry, and I Love You.

If you haven't said the title of this post to someone recently you are missing out.

I've had to say them. 

Yesterday.

Sharing your life with people, being honest, walking with people through their mess while dealing with your own...all of this creates tension. There will be offenses given and taken. Feelings and egos will get wounded. We will say and do things we shouldn't if we let people into our world and get into theirs.  

We have been in a place the last six years where people can be themselves. And be loved. Often in spite of ourselves. You know, kind of like how God loves us.

A place where you won't be written off when you make mistakes, because you are with your friends who are recovering from a bunch of their own brand of mistakes. A place where we love each other enough to tell each other the truth, and in community sometimes that truth is a moving target. Sometimes we I tell the truth with too many words, or too loudly, or without the grace we all have in abundance from God. 

What I mean is this: I am screwed up and so are all of my friends. We are shipwrecks lashed together by the love of God in Christ. 

I am grateful for a place like that. I need a place like that. 

The Scriptures are peppered with commands to confess. This assumes that if you are like me or anyone else on the planet you say and do things that require confession. That if you are in a community of faith that is healthy, a regular part of that life together will involve confession. That when you are in a community with people, trying to hold on to hope and grace, sometimes you will get it wrong.

If you haven't said "I was wrong, I'm sorry, and I love you," I would guess either you aren't close enough to people to let them see your mess, or you have been running from and justifying your mess. Maybe for years. If you haven't been able to say them, you may be missing out on intimacy with the people in your world.

They are scary words. My very DNA seems to vomit at the thought of having to say them, having to admit that I've made a mess that can't be fixed with running or justifying myself. I say them clumsily, if at all. I need to utter them more frequently, because as hard as they are to say, they are healing words.  

One of my many hopes for Hopesprings in Sioux City is that we could follow the example of our sister (mother?) community of faith in Bangor in this: That we will be a place where people are welcome to say... 

I was wrong, 

I'm sorry, 

And I love you.  

Here is a bonus tune for this week...it helped me...