Module 10 · The Right to Start Again · Lesson 2 of 2
Making it right
An apology is one third of it. The other two thirds are why yours stopped landing.
Module 10 of 12
By the end of this lesson
- Name the three parts of repair and say why an apology alone is only a request
- Deliver one repair using all three
- Write what you will do where repair is not available
You have apologized before. Possibly many times. And at some point people stopped reacting, and it made you angry, and it felt like they were refusing to let it go.
They were not. They had learned that your apology was the end of your discomfort rather than the beginning of anything changing.
An apology that is not followed by different behavior is not a repair. It is a request. You are asking them to release you, and they can tell.
Three parts, and men usually do the first and skip the other two.
Name what you did, plainly, without a reason attached. Not I am sorry you felt that way, not I am sorry but you have to understand. Just the thing you did.
Say what it cost them. This is the part that lands, because it proves you have thought about them and not just about your own guilt.
Then change something they can observe without being told. That is the part that makes the first two believable, and it is the only part that cannot be faked.
Do it at their level and keep it short. A child does not need a speech and cannot hold one.
That was not okay. It was not your fault. I am working on it. Three sentences, and then behavior.
Do not ask them to comfort you. Do not cry on them and make them manage it. Do not make them say it is fine, because they will say it is fine to end the moment and then carry it anyway.
And do not do it so often that it becomes the pattern. A man who apologizes weekly for the same thing is teaching them that words are a substitute for change.
Some of it cannot be repaired. Years you were not there. Things they saw. A person who will not speak to you and is entitled not to.
Do not force a repair on somebody who has not asked for one, because that is still about your relief.
What you do instead is live the changed life anyway, without an audience and without credit. That is the only proof available to you, and it takes years, and it may never be acknowledged.
Zacchaeus paid back four times what he took, and nobody made him. Grace came to his house first, and then the safe opened. That order matters. You are not repairing in order to be accepted. You are repairing because you already were.
An apology with no change in it is a request.
The workEight questions
Three are answered in your head and never collected. They are marked, so you know before you start which is which.
Who are you making it right with first? One name.
Why that one and not the harder one?
What have your apologies actually been?
- AReal, and followed by change
- BSincere in the moment and nothing after
- CA way to end the argument
- DRare. I do not apologize, and that is the problem
Write the repair in three parts. What you did, what it cost them, what is changing that they can see.
What are you afraid they will say?
What have you been calling repair?
- AMoney and gifts
- BBeing extra nice for a week
- CExplaining myself until they understand
- DActual changed behavior, sustained
Write the three sentences for your child, at their age, in words they will follow.
Grace came to the house first, then the safe opened. Write what you are doing that is not a bid for acceptance you already have.
DeeperThree reflections
Longer than the questions and harder. Nobody reads these but you. Write them anyway, because the ones you would not say out loud are the ones doing the damage.
- 1
Write the full apology to the person you owe it to most, here, before you say any of it out loud.
- 2
Write about a repair somebody made to you, whether it landed, and what made the difference.
- 3
Write what living the changed life looks like for a year with nobody noticing and nobody giving you credit.
Hold this
Zacchaeus did not apologize. He named a number and paid it back four times over. And the father in the other story saw his son a long way off and ran, because he had been watching the road for a long time.
Luke 19:8, Luke 15:20
Before you close this
An apology with no change in it is a request, and children learn to stop granting them
If your apologies have stopped working, that is information, not injustice. It means the previous ones were not followed by anything, and your child has updated accordingly, and they were right to.
Repair is the apology plus the changed behavior plus time. All three. Skip any one of them and you are asking to be forgiven for something you are still doing.
Make one repair. Name the specific thing, say it without explaining why you did it, say what you are doing differently, and then do that thing at least twice before you see them again.
Written for fathers who are still fighting.
Legacy · Module 10.2