The Rest of Mercy’s Story

I knew I would have to tell y’all.  I thought I’d waited long enough that I might be able to do it without crying. I was wrong. Again.

Last Sunday I flew home from Georgia and landed in Monroe, LA. My first stop on the drive home from the airport was Highway 2. I needed to see my man in the worst way and that meant riding the combine with him as he harvested corn. We enjoyed a sweet reunion as the big machine lumbered down the field, and of course, I insisted on taking pictures. It would not bother Phil if he were never in another picture as long as he lived, so help me Good Lord I’m telling the truth here, but I do so like to document everything. Everything. It’s how He made me.

It’s why I knew I would eventually have to share this story.

We had made a few rounds when Phil stopped the combine and said there was something he had to tell me.

“It’s bad,” he said. And it was.

The night before my darling man had pulled into our driveway at dark-thirty, tired, hungry, and just wanting to clean up, eat, and go to bed.  Through no fault of his own, Mercy got under his wheels.

Mercy didn’t make it.

“But he didn’t suffer, baby,” my man whispered. It helped, but I’m not embarrassed to tell you that we still sat there and cried in that field. We cried together.

I cried for Mercy– and for Phil because it clearly hurt him so much to tell me.

Phil cried for Mercy and for me because he knew how close that puppy and I had become since his rescue.

Tomorrow will be a week since Mercy has been gone. There have been many reasons why I haven’t told you.  A good friend lost his father this week. Another friend had to be separated from a small child that isn’t related to her by blood, but has been grafted into her heart through love.  The last thing I would want to do is compare this pain to theirs.

Mercy was a puppy. I didn’t even have him a full month but we had grown very close surprisingly fast. It’s hard to explain why my eyes still well up when I think of Mercy. I’ve tried to understand why I have taken this so hard. I told the Lord I was confused by the strange events that brought Mercy to me in such an unusual way and took him in a twist that I never saw coming.

My friend asked me what lesson I was taking from the end of Mercy’s story. At the time, I didn’t have an answer for her but tonight I’m seeing something. It’s dim, but it’s there.

When it comes to the mercy God has shown us in Jesus, I see the barest hint of what I’m groping with—God’s mercy is an unexplainable love that confuses us with its intensity.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. Eph. 2: 4-9

Let’s live with our hearts wide open to Jesus and eternally grateful for the mystery of God’s mercy.

Thank you for listening.

Hugs, Shellie