Letting Go Of The Need To Be RightSample

Getting Unstuck in Life, Part II

Why was it so hard for me to be wrong? In thinking back, I can tell you it was a fight that was as desperate as the one for survival. My identity was based on my performance in life and the opinions of other people, so if I was wrong, that meant I had no value. I only possessed value if I was right.

I always believed God spoke to us through His Word, and that is true, but He also speaks through people. In my case, it was the people who were closest to me—my wife, my daughter, and even my boss. When the Lord showed me that He had placed people and charged them to speak into my life, I somehow didn’t understand that I was never intended to walk this pathway alone.

We were created and designed to walk through this life with others and to allow them to be so intimately involved in our lives for a trust to develop—a trust strong enough to allow them access to our hearts and to trust them with our personal shortcomings. My flaws were not attached to who I was. I could trust others with my flaws because they would be dealt with between the Lord and me.

God’s questions are living wisdom. They are multidimensional. My realization that I was the one who was wrong catapulted me into a paradigm shift that I have been unpacking ever since. My assumptions about myself, other people in my community, and my relationship with God completely shifted. One of the core issues I discovered was that if a relationship isn’t based on whether or not you’re right, then it must mean that it’s okay to be wrong.