Apology 101

Saying "sorry" to someone doesn't mean anything unless it's from your heart. Most husbands, even Christian husbands, will take the approach of a simple apology as a blanket statement to cover all of the ways they've hurt their wives throughout their marriage. Sorry guys, this really doesn't cut it. And the sad thing is that because a Christian woman wants to be perceived as a Godly wife, she will accept the apology for the mere sake of keeping peace in the home without having received any real heartfelt healing and closure from the one who hurt her.

One of the things that the marriage ministry Michael and I are involved in encourages a husband to do is to take the time to write down all of the ways that he can think of in which he knows that he's hurt his wife. The purpose of this exercise is mainly to get a husband to really think back over the course of his marriage and come into a knowledge of what he's done and then to take responsibilty for beginning to repair the damage.

What follows is Michael's apology to me. It's not fancy or flowery and it came via no prompting from me (in fact, I didn't even know he was writing it until he gave it to me). It's raw, and extremely personal (and if you ever speak with us you'll know that we don't hide our stuff because what's the point when healing is involved) and will give you real insight into what our struggles were; they don't seem very Christian at all. But they're real and, sadly, quite common among many married Christian couples no matter how those struggles show up.

Annalea, I apologize for:

Committing adultery
Going on the web looking for women
Having an emotional affair
Looking at pornography
Threatening divorce
Bankruptcy
Broken heart
Suspiciousness
Insulting you
Keeping you up at night
Poking, probing and harassing you
Driving you crazy
Not accepting your friends
Not accepting your family
Following you and having you followed
Taping you
Running a DNA test on your clothes
Checking your phone records
Having you take a polygraph
Blaming you for problems with the kids
Blaming you for our marriage problems
Being mean to you
Calling the police on you
Being physically intimate with you before marriage
Letting you drain Jack and Evan’s accounts
Not providing financially for us
Breaking promises I made to you
Saying Daniel was not my son
Allowing pornography into our bedroom and our home
Hurting your reputation
Suggesting your family and friends were covering for you
Making you, Jack and Evan move out of the house to live in a bad neighborhood
Ruining your credit
Being a hypocrite
Going to a strip club
Masturbating
Accusing you of cheating
Being a fraud
Not being the man you needed me to be
Not making your dreams come true
Not treating you like a queen