Is it too late now to say sorry?

My life is based on a true story.

Sometimes reality feels too complex and stories give it form and meaning. It even offers the heart the ability to feel gratitude for the life it gave emotion to.

I’ve never seen my life as a story worth telling.

The average, youngest daughter to a middle-class, southern family.

I went to school and spent most of my days feeling like I was one step behind everyone else. But I managed.

I graduated high school and went on to college.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life and so I picked what made sense and what I could manage. because school was the one place that left me feeling stupid and set apart.

I never wanted to feel set apart, I just wanted to be included.

Didn’t we all?

It isn’t exactly the story itself that makes it worthy of being told, it’s the lessons we learned through them.

Three-way calls.

Does anyone out there remember the days of three-way calls, convincing your friend to call that boy and ask him if he likes you while you remain silent on the line?

I remember them.

But not in a way that makes me feel good.

6th grade, party planning, I was on the line with my best friend, Leigh. She was prone to want things her way and made no qualms using force to get her way or make her point. But I didn’t mind. She didn’t ever act that way with me.

She asked me to call our other friend, claire, to see if she wanted to do a joined birthday party with us. We all had birthdays close together so it just made sense, right?

I pressed the magic code on the phone to make it happen, she answered and only I asked about the party. Before Leigh could make her presence known, claire responds: “you know, Leigh is being a little bossy about it.”

The phone clicks. I could hear claire’s immediate regret knowing it was a three way call without me even saying it.

I’d like to say that that call caused a week worth of drama and we all moved on in our friendship, but that sadly was not the case.

The two of them never spoke again. I am talking, never.

And I? Well, I made zero efforts to do anything about it. At age 12, who really has the emotional capacity to know to be brave enough to step up, say something, or push for reconciliation? Not me.

I sat back and let one girl dismiss the other without a bat of an eye, break her heart and reject her for words spoken on a whim. I sat back and watched as she experienced loneliness and I grew my friend circle with the other. I thrived in middle school with my new friends and turned a blind eye to the girl who was full-on rejected for the remainder of those years.

Fast forward 5 years and I was driving home from school. I was now the spectacle of rejection, only now we had cell phones and a driver’s license.

I was beyond my breaking point of rejection, more than what my 17-year-old self could understand.

In a moment, the Lord put Claire’s face in my mind.

I even remember what street I was driving on in my neighborhood when it hit me.

Without a second thought, I grabbed my brick cell phone and called her.

She answered and I could hardly utter the right words. They were jumbled and messy. But I managed to say, “I am where you were years ago. At this moment nobody cares and I know now how that made you feel. If you hang up on me, I understand. But right now, I hope you hear with true sincerity that I am so sorry for what I did to you. I hope you can forgive me.”

Mind you, I hadn’t talked to this girl in YEARS.

But she picked up the phone. She heard me. And then she said, “I am beyond grateful you came back to say that to me. I forgive you.”

She and I didn’t reconcile a relationship. At this point, we were at two different schools. We had friends and lives of our own.

If she had hung up on me, I honestly would’ve understood.

But she didn’t. Maybe because at that moment the Lord needed me to remember that it’s ok to admit that you royally screwed up and that you need to say sorry even if it’s way too late.

I am not proud that it took me 5 years. I wish it had only taken me 5 minutes or 5 days to apologize. but the story went differently. It went poorly.

I managed to continue on and make my own story while she made hers.

But our stories collided again. When a moment flashed into my memory to restore my ability to see the depth of what I was facing.

I think the restoration wasn’t made in our ability to become friends again. But if offered each of us a moment of catch and release.

She caught the integrity she so deeply deserved and I was able to release the shame I carried for never doing the right thing.

The story was never rewritten but isn’t that the power of a story?

There is something in us as storytellers and even as people who merely listen to a story that begs for a redemptive act to take place. One that demands we notice what fell apart and offer it a chance at restoration.

When we deny that the problem never happened, we can begin to define ourselves by it.

But when we own it, even the messiest moments of it, we can write a powerful new ending.

And sometimes, that’s all a story needs.