What Happened?

In this section, we begin an essential part of the process of apologizing, a part that many people, incredibly, try to pass over. What is this indispensable but neglected component?

Identifying what you did wrong.

People often want to pass right over this part to get to forgiveness, to argue their case, or to go right back to doing it again. I’m sure you aren’t going through all trouble and expense of taking this course just to do that. Therefore, I’m going to ask you to describe what you did that you, or someone else believes you need to apologize for. We will call this the offense.

In some cases, you may need to apologize for years of wrongdoing. There may have been so many incidents, you can’t even remember them all. If that’s your situation, it’s best to take a thorough inventory and address every misdeed; but if that’s impossible, pick out your most egregious one, the worst act you committed in the whole collection of transgressions. Let that one stand for all the others, for it’s generally a culmination of all the rest.

In this course, you will have a lot of writing assignments. Please write in your own words, in whatever way you think of it. No one else will see what you write unless you chose to show it to them and you pay attention to the security of your documents. It needs to be written though; because you’ll take more time and more care for something you write than something you just say or ponder. Later, if you decide you will apologize, I will advise you to edit what you write here, but please don’t concern yourself with that now. Don’t let a tendency to make spelling or grammar errors stop you, either. You’re doing this for you.

Complete and Continue