Stop me when you’ve heard something like this before.
You tell your co-worker, or your spouse, or your friend, or your mail lady that you will get something for them tomorrow.
“Sure thing, Pam. I’ll gladly get you that document in the afternoon.”
“Great. Thank you!”
At that moment, all parties have a level of confidence that said document will be in Pam's hands tomorrow afternoon. Jim, who we’ll say is the promiser here, has a lot riding on his success.
The next day comes and goes and that promise is broken.
The standard response?
“No big deal!”
This phrase, or one of its counterparts, exists in relational lore.
Totes fine.
Not a problem.
It’ll get it done.
You’re good.
Don’t worry about it.
Why do we paper over offenses?
Your response need not be catastrophic (“HOW DARE YOU!”) but if we want to be men and women of integrity, and I assume you do, then keeping even small commitments matters. People watch. People remember.
If you’re married, I hope you keep your wedding vows. That’s a big vow. But if you told someone you’d buy them a book and you forgot, that’s still a type of vow—a promise, a commitment, an agreement that you will deliver.
It does us good to keep our word.
Yet our misplaced desire to appear gracious actually prevents us from extending grace. In our attempt to make it better and fill the gap that has been created, we short-circuit an important part of our relational needs: making amends.
Admit, Ask, Make Amends
To the one who caused the offense: run to the problem. Don’t run from it.
This isn’t just spiritual jargon. This isn’t if you told your pastor you’d be in church Sunday and then you weren’t. This is for the time you forgot about a lunch date.
It doesn’t matter what the offense is: don’t be the judge of how much you did or did not offend someone. Simply make it a practice to do three things:
Admit that you didn’t deliver (“I failed you.”): Own the offense you caused. Don’t wait to get found out.
Ask for Forgiveness (“Will you forgive me?”): You’re at a deficit that you created. Ask the one you offended to forgive it—fill it back up.
Make Amends (“How do I make it right?”): Don’t miss this one. Don’t let someone rush to forgive you while you still have a promise you can make good on.
And if you hear “It’s no big deal” about to emerge from the other person, stop it and say, “No, it is a big deal. I gave you my word and I didn’t follow through. Even though you’re okay, it wasn’t okay that I did what I did.”
Feel, Forgive, Move Forward
To the one offended: hear them out and speak honestly.
Do not short-circuit the process by cutting someone off at the conversational pass. Let them say what they need to say. Then, you have your moves:
Feel the offense (“That hurt.”): If we’re honest, we don’t like when even small offenses occur. We get pretty good and calloused toward them, but we still don’t like them. Explain the hurt the offense caused.
Forgive the person (“I forgive you.”): You have to mean it. To forgive it means you’ll absorb all the consequences of the offense and never bring it back up to that person again. Unforgiveness carries shrapnel and the collateral damage can last a long time.
Move Forward (“Here’s what we can do.”): Explain what moving forward looks like. If the commitment can still be made, albeit a little later, let them finish it. If it can’t be and it’s done, then figure out how to make the miss less likely next time.
When both offender and offended do their part, the relationship actually gets stronger.
Take an Inventory, Make it Right
If you’re like me, you probably have a couple of outstanding commitments you never closed out. There’s a guy I’ve never met face-to-face but I committed (either internally or directly to him) to give $100 for some advice he gave me back in 2019.
It took me six years to pay him.
Are you doing the math? That’s right. 2025. By that time we usually have moved on and put down deep roots into “It’s no big deal” land.
But it was a big deal.
Even though we'd never met or even spoken on the phone—just emails and texts—that nagging feeling stayed with me. I knew I'd made a commitment and tried to move past it, but that reminder kept coming back.
“He won’t care. That was so long ago. He doesn’t even need the money.”
I reached out to the number I had for him to ask if it was still him. While I didn’t go through all the steps (I hadn’t written this post yet), I did tell him I owed it to him, never paid it, and wanted to pay him.
He did not “no big deal” me. He said he wouldn’t turn it down. I found a way to get him the money (thanks, Zelle), added some interest, and got his reply.
“Definitely not necessary, but what a story that this makes about answering spam messages.”
From spam to one less broken commitment. I’m sure there are more I need to make in my inventory. I wonder what will come to mind next.
What about you? Where can you make it right?
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