July 15

Excuses v Plans

 

Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.  ––Proverbs 28:13

 

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.  ––Benjamin Franklin

 

Imagine you’re on deadline for a big work project, you forget to complete a critical step, and there’s no time left to fix it. What’s going through your mind? The temptation can be to either a) find a way to escape responsibility for the error, or b) soften the blow of the mistake. Put a different way, the last time you made a big mistake—at work, at home, wherever—was your first impulse to own it, no matter how bad it was?

 

Especially early in my career in the medical industry, I really struggled with the temptation to pass the buck on my mistakes—especially if I knew I could give an excuse that was impossible to disprove (i.e., there was no way my boss would ever know it was my fault). If you can’t relate to this, then good on you—you are a lot more honest with yourself than I was in my 20s and 30s. But even if I’m the only person who knows I buried or otherwise side-stepped responsibility, that is enough. Those kinds of self-lies have a way of corroding and dulling our souls, like rust on a knife blade.

 

Why is it so hard to own a mistake rather than make an excuse? First, we are ego-driven, fallen creatures. Left to our own devices, we seek the path of least ego resistance. And like Adam in the Garden after sharing the apple, we try to hide and make excuses. (The world’s very first excuse was a doozy: “The woman you gave to me made me eat the apple.”)

 

Boys make excuses; men make plans. When you mess up, own it. it’s irrelevant whether or not your first impulse is to lie or otherwise weasel out of taking responsibility. What’s relevant is what you actually do about it. In other words, being tempted isn’t a sin. No. Really. It’s not! And let me tell you, unless you are a man of far superior character, you will probably struggle with the impulse to make an excuse when things go wrong. Don’t be shocked by the temptation. Rather, prepare yourself ahead of time to combat it:

 

• When you make a mistake and are tempted to minimize or escape, stop before you act. Take a moment to breathe.
• Pray about it. Father, how do you want me to deal with this mistake?
• Own it. Take steps to rectify the error. If another party is involved (your spouse, boss, etc.), then apologize without making excuses.
• Make a plan for moving forward. I always appreciate it when an employee comes to me with a problem as well as a possible solution, rather than solely dumping the problem on me.

 

The more we understand that our identity is in Christ, the easier it will be to own and correct our mistakes. This is because through the sanctification process, as we become more like Christ, we care less about hiding our fallen self, and more about embracing our true self in Him. Ego falls away, shame doesn’t have a stranglehold on us, and mistakes no longer define us.

 

Lord, thank You that my mistakes don’t define who I am. I am Yours, so help me make plans to own and correct my mistakes, rather than making excuses to cover them up.