Vachon Imagined

The humility we want from other people can become the very thing that gives them power over us.

We want apologies. We want acknowledgment. We want someone to admit that what they did was wrong, perhaps because we believe their apology will make what happened softer, more acceptable, easier to live with.

But when we take a mature step back, we may see something we could not see while waiting for someone else to humble themselves.

The apology we keep demanding from another person can keep us stuck in the very pattern we say we want to be free from and in our hardness we are hurting them spiritually but ourselves mainly.

Our hardness is, in a sense, a hatred of our own mind. We see our own image appearing as another person, and rather than recognize it, we resist it. We condemn in another what we have not yet been willing to see in ourselves. So we are not only hurting another person spiritually; we are hurting ourselves by becoming less able to receive truth and less able to receive peace.

Because sometimes the person we believe owes us an apology is the very person we need to apologize to.

We want them to humble themselves, while refusing to humble ourselves. We want them to see what they have done to us while remaining unwilling to see what we have done to them.

There is a radical hypocrisy in this.

And humility is not asking another person to become humble enough for our heart to soften.

Our hearts do not soften because someone finally says the right words. They soften when we are humbled.

Not humiliated. Humbled.

Humbled before God. Humbled for God. Humbled for the peace that comes when we no longer need another person to become anything before we can see what is true.

Sometimes the apology we are waiting for is not the one that will set us free.

Sometimes freedom begins when we stop waiting for it.