29/03/2026
A good thought for tough situations with people
Someone was a dick this week and now I have to say sorry to them. It is the worst. Because they were casually cruel and I reacted. They won.
I got pi**ed off and then I have to apologise for how I spoke to them. And not a, "I'm sorry I had an emotional reaction to you being unkind." But an actual apology where I don't raise that they started it first.
Not because I was more wrong, but because I am responsible for my behaviour. They are responsible for theirs.
But here's what really gets me. The moment I react badly, I hand them something. I give them a way out. Suddenly the story isn't about what they did. The story is about how I responded. And they know it. And I know it. And now I'm the one apologising.
Again.
I knew the moment it came out of my mouth.
I lost my point because of how I delivered it.
The moment I react, I lose control of the story.
It stops being about what they did.
And starts being about me.
There's this moment in the stories where a woman gets dragged in front of Jesus. The religious ones are trying to trap him into condemning her/not condemning her. Whatever his reaction is, it will be wrong. So Jesus… doesn't react. He bends down and writes in the dirt. He asks them a question.
He didn’t take the bait. He didn't let their cruelty become the frame. He stayed so completely himself that eventually they just left.
I think about that a lot. The writing in the dirt. The refusal to be provoked into becoming the story.
Because when I react, I become the story. My sharp tongue, my perfectly aimed response, my complete inability in that moment to just write in the dirt… that becomes what everyone's talking about. Including me. Including this apology I now have to make.
The thing I haven't fully worked out yet is how to be that still. I've been doing this long enough to know it's possible. I've even managed it occasionally, which is honestly more surprising to me than anyone else. But mostly, when someone is casually cruel, something in me wants them to know that I know. That I saw what they did.
And in trying to make sure they know that, I hand them exactly what they needed to make me the problem.
I wonder…… is there a situation where your reaction became the story? Where your delivery handed someone an exit from their own behaviour?
What might it look like to just write in the dirt for a moment? Not to be a pushover. Not to pretend it didn't happen. But to stay so completely yourself that you don't give them the escape hatch.
You don't have to be Jesus to try it. You just have to want the outcome more than you want to be right.
You don’t have to win the moment. You just have to not lose yourself in it.
I'm still learning this. Slowly. And with a lot of apologies along the way.
Bless you all, particularly those of us who still react,
Rev Jessie
