"I get knocked down, but I get up again"

My dear friend “Aurelia” rang last night. I love her sooo much and hearing her lovely French accent on the end of the phone brought me so much comfort. I don’t know if Aurelia has any idea how cute she is or how much she blesses me with her friendship.

Anyway.

We were talking about apologies and how hard we both found it to say sorry, particularly to our husband’s. I know when I’m wrong, I’d rather eat dirt than admit it to Alun. Yet every time Alun accepts my ground-out apology with love, grace and forgiveness. He is consistently loving. I’m learning through him that it’s ok to stuff up because I can apologise, it will get accepted, and we can start over.

What Aurelia and I found funny at the time was how much we valued apologies from others even though we weren’t able to give them. We were both really firm on the importance of being apologised to, we both seemed to expect and demand it in our relationships.

Hypocritical much? Haha.

But today I wanted to talk about how powerful it is when someone (not me. Haha) apologises.

What stands out to me is when a friend of Alun’s came to visit him while Alun was recovering from his attack in the city. Mack came over with his wife and 2 little daughters. I think 1 little girl (they named her “Blessing” – isn’t that gorgeous?) at the time was asleep in the car. Mack hadn’t wanted to wake her, so they left her, left the windows down (it was a cool evening) and we sat on the front porch in full view of their car. Mack’s other daughter was just a baby and his wife cradled her in her arms as we all talked.

About 15 minutes into chatting, we heard loud wailing from Mack’s car. Blessing had woken and was of course surprised and probably scared to have woken up in a car on her own, bless her.

Now.

If that had happened to me, I would have been dismissed and told off “Stop crying. Don’t be silly. We are 10 feet from the car, you stupid girl. Calm down. No-ones left you. Come on, now. Get yourself together”

I held my breath as Mack collected his daughter, waiting for the berating I knew I would have gotten.

Instead, this happened:

Mack held his distressed daughter on his lap with so much love. “I’m so sorry” Mack spoke tenderly to her: “That must have been so scary, Blessing” he empathised “Daddy is here” and cuddled her close while Blessing’s cries turned into hiccups and occasional sobs. Mack was so kind to Blessing. It touched my heart. “I’m really sorry” he repeated.

To see a Dad APOLOGISE to his daughter was so powerful. It was so lovely. It is something that I will never forget.