# What to Do After You Hurt Someone: Lessons From a Viral Comment A 15-year-old complaint, a viral coffee shop clash and a few family stories lead Pastor Adam Mesa and friends to talk about owning your mistakes and forgiving well. Source: Pray.com — https://www.pray.com/articles/what-to-do-after-you-hurt-someone-lessons-from-a-viral-comment Author: Adam Mesa Category: Faith & Wisdom Published: 2026-10-22 Last revised: 2026-10-22 --- ## Key takeaways - **Context gets lost online.** A complaint from about 15 years ago was read as if it were happening now. - **Own the mistake first.** Pastor Adam Mesa advised a church leader whose front desk answered badly to own it and apologize. - **Skip the hedge.** An apology that opens with a condition, or turns into a list of the other person's faults, is not much of an apology. - **Forgiveness and restoration are different things.** You can forgive from the heart without going back to how a relationship used to be. - **Other people see what you miss.** Mesa and his co-hosts each told a story of a blind spot someone else pointed out. - **A parent can repair, even late.** An honest answer from Mesa's dad about an old report card did real good. ## A comment from 15 years ago Pastor Adam Mesa opened this episode of Beyond the Letter with a story about his church. A viral TikTok post asked for church recommendations in Southern California, and his church was one of the names people kept giving. Most of the replies were positive. Then one commenter wrote that the pastor was the rudest, meanest man she had ever met, and that comment collected a pile of likes. Mesa read the likes as something like answering yes to a Yelp prompt asking whether a review was helpful. He is a big man with tattoos and says he knows how he can look to strangers, but he could not think of a day when he had been rude to a visitor. He rarely comments online. This time he wrote an apology anyway, said he tries to be kind, and invited her to come back so he could shake her hand and start fresh. She answered that, going by his name, she assumed his dad had been the pastor. The experience was from about 15 years earlier. Mesa says he was 20 then, and that the pastor she met was the one before him, who had stage 4 cancer at the time and kept preaching anyway. Because nobody had dated the comment, readers took it as a description of the church today. One of his co-hosts admitted he loves reading comment sections and felt convicted hearing the story. ## One mistake is all the internet allows The conversation moved to other viral moments. Mesa described a woman in Texas who walked into a coffee shop holding a Dunkin' cup, was told outside drinks were not allowed, and posted about it. The owner replied that policy was policy. The business was boycotted, and Mesa's point was that anyone who serves the public needs to know ahead of time what crisis management looks like. He also described a woman who phoned churches saying she had run out of baby formula or diapers. Many of the churches turned her away, and the videos spread. Two mosques she called offered help right away, and one country pastor offered to drive her to the grocery store. A friend whose church was one of those called Mesa for advice. With his marketing background, Mesa told him to own it: you do not have to embarrass the front desk person, but you say that was not your heart, you made a serious error, and you apologize. Mesa saw a second problem. Churches were being flooded with negative reviews from people who were reviewing something they had watched online, not something they had lived. ## Doing right after the wrong One of the hosts said he believes people are more forgiving than they let on, even in hurt and borrowed offense, if you open yourself up and admit you were wrong. Another brought up Stephen Covey's book The Speed of Trust, which lists 13 attributes that build trust. One of them is how you right wrongs, and some people judge you more on your response to the wrong than on the wrong itself. Mesa told how he explained this to a family member who is a new Christian: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Your flesh does not want to set up the meeting or have the conversation. People instead stack justifications: yes, I was wrong, but let me tell you where you fell short. He sees it in marriage counseling. He asks each spouse whether anything is bothering them, hears no, and then watches the other spouse share a concern and get an answer full of grievances that were never mentioned. He also hears the half apology that begins by wondering whether the person was offended at all. His answer is blunt: if you stabbed a knife in someone's leg, tell them you stabbed them. With couples who have had an affair, Mesa says the hurt spouse is sometimes told to get over it after six months. He tells the one who strayed that they dug the ditch, and that *"now you're looking at your spouse telling them they're responsible for building the ladder to get you guys out of the ditch."* ## Forgiveness is not restoration Mesa also talked with a person new to faith who said they were trying to forgive but kept getting talked down to. Mesa told them that is not what forgiveness is. In his words, *"Forgiveness is what you hold in your heart and translates into your thoughts. What you're talking about is restoration, and you have no obligation to restore the relationship back to what it once was."* He said a Christian is called to forgive and to keep hate out of the heart, but boundaries are allowed, for example with a parent who was emotionally abusive. As he put it, *"it takes 1 to tango for forgiveness, but it takes 2 to tango for restoration."* If the other person makes excuses and takes no ownership, you cannot do that dance alone. He added that serious things should not be settled by text or email. They call for sitting with someone and looking them in the eye. ## A father who said he could not remember Mesa told a story from his own family. His parents once texted him an old report card of his, with all F's and a 1.4 GPA. He began to wonder, now that he is a dad himself, why they had shown so little concern back then. A week or two later, on a golf course, he told his father he was hurt. His dad thought for a moment and said he honestly could not remember why they had not cared. Then he told Mesa, *"I thought you were more than your report card."* He said he saw the young man Mesa would become, admitted they should maybe have been more involved, and apologized. Mesa said that honesty took the sting out. He also said he had thought he was stupid in high school because of his grades, and that a conversation back then would have meant a great deal. A co-host noted that the answer worked because his father did not fall back on how well Mesa turned out. He admitted the misstep and told the truth about Mesa's gifts. ## The people who see what you can't The group closed on blind spots. Jermaine told how his younger brother, whom he and his wife adopted, later said the schedule they set for him felt as though they wanted him out of their hair. Jermaine said he had never meant it that way and had taken him on hikes and to Disneyland. He still apologized for the effect it had, and his brother forgave him. Another co-host told about buying a bag of exclusive matcha for his daughter Faith on a family vacation. She gave a flat thank you, and his excitement fell. That night Mesa asked him about it. At home the dad role-played how Faith had come across: he walked in without a word and went to his phone. Her sister Trinity said, "depressed." He tried again with a hug first, and Trinity said, "depressed but willing to talk." He says Faith now greets him every morning with a kiss. Mesa's own story goes back about nine years. His wife Ashley came into his office, excited to show him a Disney sweater. He said, "oh, that's cool," and turned back to his computer. Phil, who had just given his life to Christ, asked why he did that to his wife. Mesa pushed back at first, then saw that someone on the outside read it as not caring about what Ashley cares about. Now when she opens a package, he says, "Try it on." Asked what to say to someone who builds a wall against being misread, one host answered, *"if you really want a relationship with someone, get in their world."* When someone points out a spot you did not know you were stepping on, he said, the answer is humility: you did not know, and you want to adjust. ## What this means for you Think of the last time someone told you that you hurt them. Did you start with their hurt, or with your reasons? Mesa's stories suggest that starting with the hurt, and saving the explanation for later, is what moves a conflict toward healing. You can also ask who in your life is close enough to tell you how you come across. When they tell you, listen the way Mesa listened to Phil. And if you are the one who was wronged, you can forgive from the heart while still deciding what trust and closeness should look like next.