Ready to Be Wrong

The other day I was in a funk. I had been for a few days. The frustration and feelings of hopelessness were taking over. It was like a snow ball going downhill, growing and growing. Then, all of a sudden I was confronted by someone, and I didn’t like it.

Being ready to be wrong is not usually our first response. 

While getting ready for work, my wife turned to me and said, “Do you mind if I tell you what I’m seeing?” I was surprised. My first instinct was to say, “Heck yeah I mind, if you are going to tell me how this is MY fault somehow!”. I felt justified in my feelings and my wallowing in the pity party. I felt right to act that way. However, I dug down deep and made a choice that I don’t always make. I was worn out from feeling frustrated and stuck. I was ready to be wrong.

We tend to value “being right”. 

Being ready to be wrong (humility) is underrated in relationships. We tend to favor being right, especially when things get heated. This unwillingness to give up the fight to prove we are right causes a lot of relational damage. As “right-fighters”, we hurt each other and create distance between one another.

Our relationships thrive when we are ready to be wrong.

Bill Thrall once said, “Conflict never destroys relationships. Lack of Humility does that.” This is a transformational truth if we will let it be a reality in our lives. Conflict is not fun, but it is not our relational enemy. Lack of humility is the true enemy in our relationships. It destroys them.

Humility is scary, but freeing and healing.

When my wife asked me if she could tell me something she was seeing in me, it was scary. I wanted to hide my fear behind a wall of defensiveness and anger. I did not want to hear that I was doing something to keep myself stuck. It’s not pleasant to have a mirror held up in front of me when I have egg on my face. However, in this case, thankfully I let her tell me what she had been seeing in me. It was hard truth, but it was from a heart of love. She wanted to love me, and I let her. Humility lets us experience love.

I trusted her with myself in that moment. Not only that, I trusted myself with God as He worked through the words she spoke to me. The readiness to be wrong (humility) opened me up to experience an environment of love and grace. I experienced a freedom I could never have experienced if I had continued to declare my justification for being angry while rehashing everything that was not going my way.

-Neil

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