In a post on my FB page, I said simply:

God's mercy is beautiful.

In truth, I expected several people to like it because we've all known times when God's mercy has protected us from pain. However, mercy does not always protect us from pain. It, in fact, can inflict it.

Mercy sometimes crushes our dreams.
It sometimes totally wrecks out comfortable lives.
It sometimes takes someone we love.

Sometimes in God's mercy, we are not the receivers. We are the witnesses.

I witnessed God's mercy when my mom's battle with cancer was short. I witnessed mercy...when people who suffered emotional and mental loss, who could not overcome the nightmares...or the crushed heart...were allowed to exit that pain early or quickly. Such mercy left many of us with sadness, but it was God's mercy, and it is beautiful.

The Peace of Mercy

I pulled out of my driveway at 7:15 this morning to make the nearly two hour drive to my vet's clinic. My dog spent a second night there last night. SuperWonderFred is sick, sick enough to die.

My Favorite Big Dog is having liver problems, and he's too sick for a biopsy which would give a more definitive diagnosis, so Dr. Margaret is trying to get the symptoms under control so she can get to the problem. The ultimate problem is not matter what she does, he may die.

I've cried a lot over that dog the last two days. I toss and turn at night because he's not lying on the floor beside my bed, his snoring soothing me to sleep. I walk in the door, and he's not there to meet me with a tail wag and a shove of his muzzle into my hand. His deep throaty bark doesn't fill the backyard. It's different, and it's not a good different. It's a hard different, and yet, it's a peaceful different.


 I've spent a lot of time praying over Fred, not just in the last few days but over the last few years. Fred has hip problems. He has had them since he was a year old. Some days it is hard for my big dog to pull himself up off the floor, and there are days when it is impossible for him to get on the large ottoman that gives his stiff joints a reprieve from the cold cement floor. Several months ago, Dr. Larry tried some meds to help with the pain. Thankfully, I didn't get the prescription refilled yet because, you guessed it, those meds are hard on the liver. Even before that, I worried, though, what happened when the meds didn't really help anymore or the joints just got too stiff? How would I know when the pain of being Fred was too great, and how would I know exactly what to do? How would I know the merciful thing?

In the last four years I've learned a lot about mercy. I've learned mercy does not give us what we deserve. I've also learned mercy delivers us from how bad it could be. Mercy isn't always the answer we want, but it is always the answer we need.

Mercy knows what is coming and delivers a person--or a Fred--before the worst hits. Mercy is big picture kindness.

On the way to the clinic this morning, I expected the phone to ring and Dr. Margaret to be on the other line to break the news that Fred had died in the night. He really was that sick yesterday. Even if the phone call didn't come, I knew today could be a day of hard decisions that really weren't decisions at all  but acknowledgment of the undeniable. I took the blanket Fred and I lie on when his joints hurt too much to move much, and I tried to prepare myself to lie down with my Big Dog one more time and simply let him go to sleep. This morning wasn't that morning, but we are far from being out of the woods, and eventually that time will come. Without an act of God, liver disease will kill My Favorite Big Dog.

So I pray for an act of God. The act of mercy.

I ask for God to do what is best because there are no good solutions, not any any of us want anyway. We want the pain free, fear free, death free, and there is no such thing on this earth, and we hate the truth, but the truth is this: there is always a best solution. We don't have to like it. Sometimes it rips our hearts out, but it is still the best solution.

The only solution that can make anything any better is love poured out in mercy.

So I pray for mercy knowing it may mean I will never hear SuperWonderFred snore by my bed, I may never walk into my house and feel his muzzle in my hand, his throaty bark may never fill my backyard again. I pray for mercy knowing this morning was good, and tomorrow I may get a call he's gone.

As I write that my eyes burn with tears, and my chest tightens because this is the companion who has let tears fall on his fur, laid with his head in my lap while I mindlessly rubbed my hand down his side and stared blankly into the world of can't-believe-how-much-has-gone-wrong, and moved from room to room just to be near me. He is love in a furry package with big brown eyes and a tail that can clear a coffee table in one motion. He's my Fred, and I can't imagine the silence of his not being here.

And even as the tears fall, the peace holds.

The peace that the Almighty God who gave me the gift of Fred knows how to give the gift of mercy to Fred.

I don't know what that mercy looks like. All I know is I've seen enough of God's mercy to know it may not be the answer I like, but it is the answer that is good. And in that goodness, my heart finds peace.

Yesterday Was Ugly, so Do Something New

Ephesians 4
22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self,

 which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;

23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds;

24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

You know that old self that yelled at the kids yesterday, picked a fight with the beloved, was rude to the cashier who had no control over the fact they don't have your favorite chocolate, and tossed some select sign language at that driver who needs to learn the point of a blinker.

Yeah. That self.

Take it off.

Toss it in the trash.

That isn't who you are anymore. You just forgot for the day, but today, you remember without fear.

You are like God in true righteousness...doing the right thing, saying the right thing, responding the right way, only holding the right things important...and holiness...forgiving yourself, humbling yourself to ask forgiveness from others...and being humbled enough that they can easily forgive you because they shouldn't HAVE to forgive you, they should see your true repentance and be compelled to forgive you.

Put on that new self that takes up the easy yoke that isn't weighted with pride or ego or self-loathing, but with love, kindness, and mercy...even for yourself.

Beating yourself up for yesterday won't undo it, but it might lead you to repeat it, so let it go.

Put on the new you with new hope for a new outcome in this new day. It's a gift. Unwrap it for all its worth.

When Who You Were and Who You Are Only Matters Because of Who He Is

Daddy,

Today I was reminded of how I've failed in the past, and I was asked how I plan to move forward. I thought I had, but obviously this person doesn't see it.

I am hurting beyond words, and once again I am fighting every voice that ever told me I wasn't good enough, perfect enough, godly enough, beautiful enough, thin enough, whatever enough. And the truth is, I'm not.

The truth is the list of my sins and failures is so long and so vast I could drown in them. Believe me, Daddy, no one knows more than me...or is more disgusted than me...at the list of how I have not been the Christian I profess to be.

And this person asked, "So how do you plan to move on from here?"

As though there and here is the same place, as though I were the same person.

And as much as I hate to admit it, this person is right. I'm the same person.

I'm the same person who hurts because life didn't work out the way I dreamed it would.
I'm the same person who fights through the fear and pain to stand in faith knowing your heart is for me and your plans are good.
I am the same person who sins because...I'm...someone who sins, and I'm the same person who has to forgive myself for not be perfect enough and not holding you in high enough regard to work harder to get it right or just choose what it right.
I'm the same person who absolutely hates getting it wrong and hurting you.
I am the same person who is ashamed of how unlike you I can be.
I'm still the same wife who wants to be perfect for her Husband and prays everyday to glorify you and every night prays for forgives for the ways I didn't.
I'm the same person who lies in my bed at night, thinks of how I made a fool of myself instead of loving like you do...and cries because really, am I ever going to get this right?
And I'm the same person who can't figure out how I can love you so much...and fail you so badly.

I'm the same person who knows I am still responsible for raising these two gifts to seek your perfection despite my imperfection.
I'm the same person who prays for you to do great things knowing how utterly not great I am...that in fact the only great thing about me is what you accomplish despite me.
I'm the same person who keeps snack bars and water bottles in my truck for people on the road knowing I can't fix their lives...but maybe for that moment instead of seeing how hard life is, they can see you.

I'm the same person who knows there is only way way to move on from anywhere, and that is you and believing you when you say there is grace for the worst of me and mercy for the ugly...and that somehow you don't see what I've done or who've I've been but choose to see who you created me to be and what I'm becoming, and, oh! God, I pray I am becoming like you.

And I'm the same person who knows...you are everything...and without you I am nothing.

You are all I have ever had. I've only had one way to move forward from anything, and that has always been...and still is...you.

I know this with all I am, and I pray that never changes.

"Be Merciful to Me, A Fool"--A Poem...My Prayer

Years ago I found this poem. When I found myself without words because I knew I had kept heaven from earth by my own foolish choices...was so undeserving of mercy...and yet in such desperate need of it...I would whisper these words...Even now there are times when shame of my own stupidity drowns eloquence and honor...and all I know to plead is, "Dear God, be merciful to this fool."

THE FOOL'S PRAYER
by: Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887)

HE royal feast was done; the King

Sought some new sport to banish care,

And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,

Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!"

 

The jester doffed his cap and bells,

And stood the mocking court before;

They could not see the bitter smile

Behind the painted grin he wore.

 

He bowed his head, and bent his knee

Upon the Monarch's silken stool;

His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

 

"No pity, Lord, could change the heart

From red with wrong to white as wool;

The rod must heal the sin: but Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

 

"'T is not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;

'T is by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

 

"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;

These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust

Among the heart-strings of a friend.

 

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept--

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?

The word we had not sense to say--

Who knows how grandly it had rung!

 

"Our faults no tenderness should ask.

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;

But for our blunders -- oh, in shame

Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

 

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool

That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!"

 

The room was hushed; in silence rose

The King, and sought his gardens cool,

And walked apart, and murmured low,

"Be merciful to me, a fool!"

Merciful Firecrackers

You know one of the wondrous things about God is His amazing mercy.

He looks at us and says, "You are doing something stupid, and you know it is stupid, but you're still doing it. Obviously you need me to save you from yourself because that thing you think is a crackerjack is really an A-bomb in the making."

Then He gives us a hard slap on the wrist, and we whine about the slap on the wrist that saves us from the major explosion with potential to destroy us.

I am thankful for the slap on the wrist.