Raspberry Iced M

I used to be terrified of being wrong.

Not necessarily about little things.

If I confidently tell you that Target closes at 10 and it actually closes at 9, I’ll survive.

I’m talking about being wrong about things that matter.

Wrong about another person.

Wrong about someone’s intentions.

Wrong about a decision I made.

Wrong about something I believed.

Wrong about myself.

Those kind of mistakes use to feel really threatening.

Because somewhere along the way, I confused being wrong with being bad.

And those are not the same thing.

Being wrong used to feel like an indictment.

If someone told me I’d hurt them, my first instinct was often to explain. That’s not what I meant. You misunderstood me. And here’s what you did. You don’t know the whole story.

Sometimes those things may have even been true. But I was so busy defending my intentions that I couldn’t hear someone else’s experience. Because admitting I was wrong felt like admitting something much bigger. Maybe I am the person they say I am.

So I defended. Explained. Justified. Argued.

Anything to escape the discomfort of being wrong.

What I am learning is that being wrong is actually pretty normal. This may come as a shock, but apparently, I am a human being. Which means I am going to get things wrong. Frequently. I will misread situations, make assumptions, fly off at the mouth. I’ll remember conversations differently than someone else. I’ll make decisions with incomplete information. I believe things today that 10-years-from-now me will shake her head at.

And none of that is necessarily evidence of bad character. It’s evidence that I’m human. The problem isn’t being wrong. The problem is becoming so committed to not being wrong that I become unwilling to learn.

There is so much freedom in the phrase, “I was wrong.” Three words. No dissertation. No closing argument. No Power Point presentation containing seventeen exhibits explaining why I technically had a point. Just…I was wrong. The freedom in admitting it lies inside the fact that I don’t have to defend it anymore. I don’t have to build arguments around it. I don’t have to rewrite history to make myself look better. I don’t have to convince everyone else that I’m not a horrible person.

I can simply learn something…and move forward.

I can change my mind.

That’s another unexpected freedom of getting older.

For the better part of my existence, Batman has been my favorite superhero.

And when someone would come at me with their favorite, I pulled out my metaphorical notecards and lectured them on all of the reasons why Batman was superior.

Well, I went to watch the new Spiderman last night with my boys.

And I loved it.

I remember thinking as we left the theater that the movie was superior to any Batman movie ever made. And then having a mini-identity crisis because I’ve argued for 25 years that Batman was better.

Who even am I?

But then I realized that I’m allowed to change my mind. About movies. Superheroes. People. Relationships. Parenting. Marriage. About what success looks like. About what I want. About things I once defended passionately.

Changing my mind does not always mean I was foolish before. Sometimes it means that I know something now that I didn’t know then.

And growth should change our minds on occasion. If I believe the same things at 60 that I did at 20, I hope it’s because those things have survived 40 years of examination…not because I was too proud to reconsider them.

A willingness to be wrong means we are teachable. I can’t ask God for wisdom while simultaneously insisting I already know everything. I can’t ask people to be honest with me and then punish them when their honesty makes me uncomfortable. I can’t grow while protecting every old version of myself. If growth starts with, “Maybe I was wrong about that,” that is okay.

And a little side note – being wrong doesn’t mean the other arguing party is right. This matters, too. Life isn’t always divided neatly into little black and white boxes. I can acknowledge I was wrong without accepting responsibility for everything. I can apologize for my behavior without agreeing with someone else’s entire interpretation of me. I can say, “I shouldn’t have done that,” without also saying, “Therefore, everything you believe about me is true.” Accountability doesn’t require self-erasure. I’m still learning that the world is mostly gray.

I don’t need to win every case against myself. I spend enough of my time working around arguments, evidence, facts, and competing versions of events. I don’t want to turn every relationship into a courtroom, too. Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a verdict. Sometimes two people experience the same situation differently. Sometimes I hurt someone when I didn’t mean to. Sometimes someone hurt me when he/she didn’t mean to. Sometimes everyone involved could’ve better handled a situation. And sometimes…I was simply wrong. Period.

God corrects without condemning. Correction doesn’t mean rejection. He can show me something ugly in myself without declaring that everything about me is unredeemable. He convicts me without abandoning me. He prunes without destroying the entire plant. He says, “This needs to change.” And I can receive that correction without collapsing into shame.

I’m no longer interested in being right at all cost. I want to be honest. Teachable. The kind of person who can hear something uncomfortable and at least consider whether there’s truth in it.

Sometimes I’ll analyze and still disagree. Sometimes I’ll realize I was partially wrong. And sometimes I’ll have to swallow my pride and say, “Yep, that one’s on me.”

There is so much freedom in that. Because I don’t need a spotless record to have integrity. In fact, maybe integrity isn’t about having a spotless record at all. Maybe it’s about being willing to tell the truth about the record I actually have.

I will be wrong again.

But that doesn’t terrify me the way it once did.

Because being wrong gives me an opportunity to learn.

And learning gives me an opportunity to change.

And I would rather be a woman who can change than a woman who has to be right.