What Matters Most When You’ve Screwed Up

I sent a really dumb email the other day.

It wasn’t even a whole email yet. It was just a draft. It was a thing I’d started typing, and before I could read over it to make sure it said what I thought it should say, my twitchy mouse finger hit the send button.

This is not what I meant to have happen.

The last sentence was only half-written. My tone was defensive rather than direct. And autocorrect helped me say “Hank’s!” instead of thanks.

None of this is a big deal, I understand.

I didn’t know the person well, so they might think I’m a terrible correspondent—but it’s not like my email will result in famine or war or even a bad hair day. Everyone survived my mistaken click of the “send” button.

But my brain took this as evidence of what it had suspected all along: that I wasn’t really qualified for interacting with other humans. That I am a mistake maker, that I am just awful.

I knew it.

Anne Lamott writes that doubt is not the opposite of faith—certainty is. Her friend Father Tom taught her that.

Certainty leaves no room for possibility.

There’s no mystery in certainty. No questions. No wonder. There’s no growth and no change, because what can change when you’re already certain? She’s talking about faith in God here, but I think it applies to having faith in people, too.

And people do give us plenty of chances to choose between certainty and faith.

They run late and don’t send a text message. They cut us off in traffic. They reschedule at the last minute. They support candidates we oppose. They choose the gross coffee.

They accidentally send us passive-aggressive sounding email. Ahem.

At times like this, I can be certain about people: certain that they’ll never change, and certain about which boxes they fit in. I can be certain I understand enough. I can be certain I know just what’s going on here.

Certainty is easy, but it feels terrible.

Faith is harder, but I think it makes us better.

I can have faith that everyone is doing their best. I can have faith that each person is, in some way, reflecting the image of God, which means each person is, in some way, reflecting love.

If they don’t seem to be reflecting love, the most generous interpretation I can come up with is that they need my compassion. And I can have faith that this is true.

Maybe the truth is, they’re afraid, or lonely, or tired, or grieving. Maybe they feel overlooked or misunderstood. Maybe they made a mistake, and maybe one mistake doesn’t tell me much about who they are.

Or maybe they’re just mean, but even then I can have faith that growth and change are possible.

Having faith in people doesn’t mean we abandon our intuition.

It doesn’t mean that we have no boundaries. It just means I choose to believe the best thing I can about a person and their motives in a given situation.

I can be certain that I am right—or I can have faith that I may not understand the whole picture. I can be certain that things will always be this way—or I have faith that things can change.

I can be certain that someone deserves my judgment—or I can have faith that they need my kindness.

I can choose certainty about people or I can choose faith in people.

But I can’t have both at the same time. That’s true whether we’re talking about the person whose car is plastered in bumper stickers that make me cringe, or whether the person we’re talking about is me.

I don’t like where certainty takes me. I want to make space for possibility, for change, and for curiosity. I want to grow in that kind of faithfulness.

How can you choose to have faith this week?