A Letter Of Apology

Okay I’ve mentioned it in my last two posts so now it’s time to let you all in on something I did on my birthday and I’m glad I did it.

I sent a letter of apology to my cousin/ life long friend. We had what I’ll call “a disagreement” a little over a year ago. We hadn’t communicated since then with the exception of once.

Over the last year I have learned a lot about reconciliation in relationships. Mostly from what learned from the life of Jesus and the books I’ve read books about the gospel, the 12 apostles, and the parable of the Prodigal Son.

The main thing I learned is that to reconcile with someone, in the relationship someone has to make a gesture of “good will” toward the other. Inherit in this vital step is a vulnerability. There’s always a risk of rejection. But the one making the step views being separated from the other person worse than the risk of that rejection.

Now let me step back a bit and tell you that despite a very strong desire to patch things up with my cousin for almost 9 months my personal pride was not willing to allow me to approach him from a vulnerable position. I couldn’t admit my responsibility for the rift between us.

Over the course of about 3 months God dealt with my heart and pointed out to me that my love for my cousin and the desire to be his friends again would require an admission of responsibility for causing problem.

I began to read our email correspondence again. Since he lives in Pennsylvania and I live in Kentucky that’s how we played out and escalated our disagreement. I began to see how I was at fault. How cruel and judgemental my words were. I realized I deserved what I got out of the situation. I wasn't much of a friend at all. God gave me a humble heart toward my cousin. I was so wrong in what I did that I needed to come back to him in a very repenting way.

About the beginning of July I started writing telling him I’d seen the truth in his point of view, that I was wrong in my behavior, I needed to ask him to forgive me because I wanted to reconcile our friendship. After much personal debate about if and when to send the letter I decided that my birthday would be the perfect day. So yesterday I sent it fully prepared for either a positive or a negative response.

I am happy to say that I received a positive response. He also asked me to forgive him for his stubbornness. Then he told me something that made me smile. He told me that the entire time we were not in contact with each other he continued to read my blog. He has read every post. That shows that even though our friendship may have been disrupted on the surface it continued in both our hearts and minds. While he was reading my blog I was constantly seeing, hearing, or thinking of things that reminded me of him and wishing things were different.

I am so glad that my stubborn actions didn’t end one of the strongest friendships of my life. My cousin told me that I should “stop beating myself up” in regard to lamenting the degree to which harmful my actions toward him were. But I don’t consider it being hard on myself. It’s more an attitude of gratefulness that in spite of my selfish behavior our friendship has survived. I did everything to destroy it but yet it survived.

So now I am reconciled with my cousin and life long friend. We are going to have to work on catching up about what has happened over the last year; at least I will. Once that’s done we can look to the future and enjoying celebrating our 50th year of life together.

First thing's first I'm going to send him a Facebook friend invitation. That should get things going.