Mercy {five minute friday}

It’s Friday and that means it’s time to write for five minutes, no editing, no backtracking, no overthinking (I broke all these rules this week). Lisa-Jo provides a prompt and in this community, we write, and then we encourage one another. So link it up, friends, and share the love because “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” E.B White via Lisa Jo.

This week’s prompt is….

Mercy

You know it doesn’t always have to be as big as a home in Kenya. That’s amazing and beautiful and makes me want to get on a plane tomorrow–

but I can’t.

Because it’s here too. In the small and the everyday and the ordinary. It’s in the open invitation to lunch so that everyone feels included and it’s in the understanding smiles you exchange without words to the mother who had the screaming toddler on the playground. It’s in the hands of the friend who took my tray one night at McDonald’s when I was seven months pregnant and three kids in already and so overwhelmed that a single milk spill unraveled my control.

I’ve found it in the quiet words of the secretary when she doesn’t chastise me for calling for the third time in a row to change pickup arrangements. Sometimes it swings loudly and shrieks joy and “Look at me, mommy!” after a morning of tempers and strong wills. I think it’s given in the simple, like the times we choose to know or speak or ask rather than assume or complain or judge.

Unfortunately we who claim to know Christ can give it least. We forget we were once all women at the well or thieves on the cross begging for someone to give us water that will truly quench our thirst. We take it for granted and we forget to give it away.

“Do justice, LOVE mercy, walk humbly with your God…” ~Micah 6:8

It’s an act, a verb, a command this love mercy is.

It’s what happens when we get past our version of what should be and start living with and loving on the version that is. Wrapping ourselves in the safe bubble wrap of But, I’m praying for her isn’t always enough. Sometimes people need the apology they don’t deserve and the hug that isn’t forced and the kinship that isn’t fake and the home that saves their babies.

Sometimes we forget how incredible it can be to show a little mercy.

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Confession: I almost didn’t write a post today. I tried and failed last night and if I’d been speaking I’d have said it was because my tongue was thick and clumsy and couldn’t form words, but I was writing so instead it was my fingers that couldn’t seem to find that magic moment with my brain to put what my heart was singing down into coherent sentences and imagery. So I gave up and went to bed and tried again this morning and gave up again. Then I went about my day and waited for God to speak. He did to me, and I hope he did to you too.

One of the reasons I was so finger-tied is because today’s prompt was written by Alia, who is one of my new favorite people. Between the praise I got from her and Lisa Jo last week, I figured I could retire from blogsphere a pretty happy little writer. I wanted to do justice to her words and to this cause because loving on and supporting new mothers from anywhere and from any walk of life is so near and dear to my heart. It’s why I coordinate MOPS; it’s why I’ll be pleading again for more workers because today in Chic-fil-a I didn’t invite moms because we don’t have the space for their children. That’s an awful feeling, to know someone might need the resources you have but there’s no way to offer them without more physical or financial support. I know most of you can’t come over my way and rock babies on Friday mornings, but you can click here and read about Mercy House and the amazing good it’s providing these mothers who are our sisters in motherhood.

And if you’ve been stalking Alia and me on twitter, you can find the recipe for fried okra right over here.