“What do you say to him, Katie?” Dad has me look him in the eyes. I stick out my lip in a pout that’s been common for the full eight years I’ve been alive.

“Sorry,” I look away. I’m not a bit sorry.

“Sorry for?” Dad prompts me.

“Sorry for scratching your car with a stick.”

“And?”

“I was wrong.”

“And?”

“Please forgive me.”

Now almost twenty years later, I realize how hard it is to make a proper apology. To name the specifics. To admit wrong.

Like when I tell them on the group chat that “she always does this” and I know she doesn’t. I know I have to make it right.

Or when she tells me that the show I’m watching is offensive to her culture and my heart’s reaction is defensiveness. I know I need to make it right.

We walk together at dusk and I tell him how I’m re-learning how to lay down my life, my desires, my politics, my agenda, my privilege.

Because I’d rather view my life through the lens of Christ.

I’d rather have eyes that are open to see suffering than closed by excuses.

Because change cannot start in the world until it starts in the heart. And it can’t penetrate the heart without the sharp blade of humility.

He tells me that I need to change, but I want us to move past the discussion.

It’s easier to tell him ‘I love you’ than to say the other three words.

“I was wrong.”

And when the streets fill with a cry for justice, it’s easier to say “I love you” than to go back to the basics of the gospel.

Back to recognition of wrong.

Back under the blade of humility.

Back to laying down my privilege and my lofty view of self.

To quietly acknowledge that things will have to be different.

They must be.

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” Philippians 3:8