• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Mothering Spirit

everyday parenting as spiritual practice

  • About
    • About Laura
    • New Here?
    • Popular Posts
    • Contact Me
    • Privacy Policy
    • Insta-Links
    • My Newsletter
  • My Books
    • Grieving Together: A Couple’s Journey through Miscarriage
    • Prayers for Pregnancy & Birth
    • Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting
    • To Bless Our Callings: Prayers, Poems, and Hymns to Celebrate Vocation
    • Living Your Discipleship: 7 Ways to Express Your Deepest Calling
    • Little Rock Scripture Studies
  • After Loss
    • what to do when a friend loses a baby
    • what to do for kids when their sibling dies
  • prayers for pregnancy
    • The Complete E-Books
    • Trying to Conceive
    • Month One
    • Month Two
    • Month Three
    • Month Four
    • Month Five
    • Month Six
    • Month Seven
    • Month Eight
    • Month Nine
    • Infertility
    • Miscarriage
    • Morning Sickness
  • Prayers for Parenting
  • For You
    • favorite resources for parents
    • faith resources for ministers
  • Show Search
Hide Search

a year of mercy

7 Comments

This is what mercy means.

At the end of last August – before summer’s harvest gave up for good, before an inkling of our daughters had yet twinkled into being – an invitation arrived.

Would I write a book on mercy? A small one, short and Scripture-dense, to break open the Word and the God-trait that was the year’s focus (for all things Catholic)?

Yes, of course. An invitation to write, a chance to settle into Scripture, a timely theme. These are a few of my favorite things.

And I thought I knew a thing or two about mercy. Or at least I had the right books on the dusty shelves from enough years of theology to learn what I needed to know.

I thought I could say something.

I said yes.

. . .

This is what mercy means.

I wrote the book on weekends last fall. Stuck lying on the couch with morning sickness, rising only to search out another book or stumble to the bathroom to be sick.

My stomach swelled as the twins grew, two babies who were not even faint blips on the radar when I said yes to writing.

It would be fine, I decided. I could still write, even under pregnancy’s strain. Morning sickness was a familiar companion, even with the unexpected anxiety that came from twins.

I knew enough to finish the task. It was a short book, after all. I could see the project through.

Besides, I thought – as I rested book or Bible or journal on the mound of my growing belly – I could tell the babies about this someday.

Tell them how I wrote this little book while they were tiny within me, kicking and jostling each other for space.

Smile at how these wee ones were my writing companions, even before they saw the light of day.

It could still be good.

. . .

This is what mercy means.

I finished the manuscript in January.

Everything unraveled in February. Everything I thought I knew.

Page proofs arrived in March, a week after the twins died. Somehow I edited in April; I have no memory of this. The editor was an angel; she sent more prayers than queries.

Bowed low with grief, I tried to think that it could be still beautiful, that I had written the little book while Maggie and Abby were alive and within me.

I hoped the words still said something good about mercy. Even though everything I believed about God was now turned inside out.

The package arrived this week, quietly on our doorstep. Inside were shiny covers, smooth pages, slender but solid. A finished work.

I flipped through the pages and tried to feel something, anything. The book did not feel like the baby I held when my first book was in my hands.

Because this was not my baby. My babies were gone.

Then the last page caught my eye. The Works of Mercy. You can’t write Catholic on the subject without them, so of course I wove them into the text. (Also in belated deference to whatever religion teacher made me memorize them in grade school.)

I looked at the list again. Seven bodily, seven spiritual.

And then I realized: this is what mercy means.

Because this year was not about me saying something about mercy, or writing something about mercy, or doing anything about mercy. It was about receiving mercy.

Every day of this godforsaken, God-filled year has been drenched in mercy.

Feed the hungry. Visit the sick. Bury the dead.

Counsel the doubtful. Comfort the sorrowful. Pray for the living and the dead.

People did this for me, for my babies, for my family, all year long. They were mercy to us.

They sent tin-foiled casseroles and fresh-baked bread and restaurant gift cards from across the country. They visited us with armfuls of flowers and sat with me crying on the couch when I was too weak to walk upstairs. They turned out in droves for a funeral for two babies they never got to see or hold.

They listened to my grief for hours and read pages of it here. They texted and called and hugged and comforted my sorrow. They prayed and prayed and prayed, while the girls were living and while they were dying and every single day since.

Mercy was not what I studied or wrote this year. It was what I lived.

Because it was not about me. It was about all of you.

. . .

This is the part where the author should tell you where to buy the book, how to use it by yourself or with your Bible study, where you can learn more from the publisher.

But that is not the part I want you to know.

What I want you to know about mercy is this: it is torrents of grace when you least believe it exists. It is human goodness poured out so thick you realize it must be of God. It is concrete compassion, cooked in food and wrapped in gifts and spoken in words and lifted in prayers and soaked in love, so much love when your aching body and worn-out soul crave it to survive.

You were mercy to me. Every one of you who read my words, who shared your own, who prayed for perfect strangers you have never met.

The irony is thick: I don’t know if I understood mercy until after this book was finished.

But the months I spent with mercy on my mind – and Maggie and Abby safe within my womb – convinced me that this love at the heart of God could be the most important attribute of all.

Mercy is pure love. Undeserved compassion. Shared suffering. Tender transformation. It is the gift that makes God divine. It is the challenge that pushes us to become the best of what is human.

You taught me what mercy means. I will never forget it.

Share this:

  • Share
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mary says

    1 August 2016 at 7:23 am

    Laura you taught us what mercy is we feel it in the honest cries of your heart and through your writing. Still lifting you up in prayers and love.

    Reply
  2. Nell @ Whole Parenting Family says

    1 August 2016 at 7:41 am

    My beloved friend. It’s been so emotional and raw and painful being with you in this grief. It has also been beautiful and transcendent and joyful. Thank you.

    Reply
  3. marsha partington says

    1 August 2016 at 8:59 am

    This was a beautiful, beautiful insightful blog post. Laura, your strength and raw honesty are gifts to the rest of us. You have the ability to drive others forward when they are drowning in their own sorrow. You just taught me what “mercy” is, and for that I thank you.

    I hope I get to see you soon. Maybe the writers group on August 13??? Until I can hold and hug you in person, know I carry you in my heart and thoughts. The wisdom you share from the depths of your losses is a gift to others in your life.

    Reply
  4. Drusilla Barron says

    1 August 2016 at 9:10 am

    How very poignant and beautiful. Thank you so much for this post. You will be in my prayers.

    Reply
  5. Denise says

    1 August 2016 at 9:52 am

    This brought tears to my eyes.

    Reply
  6. Shelley says

    2 August 2016 at 12:01 am

    Beautiful. Thankyou.

    Reply
  7. Sara Kazlauskas says

    3 August 2016 at 3:25 pm

    I am still processing the give and take that is mercy. I can’t put it into words yet, but your words are helping show me the way. Hugs and prayers, fellow traveller!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About Laura

I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

Follow Laura

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
Laura Kelly Fanucci
Books by Laura Kelly Fanucci
e-books by Laura Kelly Fanucci

Mothering Spirit Newsletter

Henri Nouwen quote

From the Archives

Footer

Follow Me on Facebook

Follow Me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Tweets by laurakfanucci

Follow Me on Instagram

thismessygrace

thismessygrace
Watch me try not to laugh while my kids are scream Watch me try not to laugh while my kids are screaming upstairs at my spouse while I muse on motherhood & creativity 😝

Check out @grottonetwork for thoughtful reflections on relationships, work, faith, and life’s big questions. And let yourself thank someone this week for the creative work of nurturing new life in you!
Pilgrimage update! I shared in my last newsletter Pilgrimage update! I shared in my last newsletter that we were able to add Chartres & Mont-St-Michel to our itinerary, plus an extra day in Paris. Three of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, so I can’t wait to pray there with you on pilgrimage in October. Check out my bio for details.

Want to hear more about the trip? Join me on Friday, May 6th, at 1:30 pm CT for an Instagram Live with Claire Swinarski - founder of @thecatholicfeminist & leader of last year’s pilgrimage to France with @selectinternationaltours 

Claire will share her experience on pilgrimage, her favorite places in France, & her wisdom for anyone thinking about joining us this fall. 

Have you ever been to France? Or made a pilgrimage? I’d love to hear your favorites!

#pilgrimage #travelwithselect #holyplaces #travel2022 #france #thesacredway2022
For years these words hung on the wall of my offic For years these words hung on the wall of my office. A reminder to behold the beauty in the ordinary.

I took them down after grief tore apart my world. Normal days, what a joke.

But years later I pulled the words out again. Turned out they were true, of course.

I had always caught my breath at the line about war, barely able to imagine longing for boring days from bloody battlefields.

Today I keep the wise words before my eyes again, as a way to keep praying for Ukraine.

For all the places where war or violence make for (ab)normal days.

May the common rock of any ordinary day we’re given remind us to remember all whose earth is upheaved right now.
The sun came out for the first time in days (weeks The sun came out for the first time in days (weeks? gloomy where you are, too?).

So I followed every ladybug in the bedroom to the window, closed my eyes and sunned my face. I could have curled up like a cat for hours. But the sun slipped back, retreating behind the grey wall as quickly as it came.

May today hold a gentle reminder to turn wherever you find the light, to let it warm and delight you. The spiritual practice of sunning ourselves (for a whole holy second!) is not trite or toxic: we are creatures who crave what is good and this is not wrong.

If you linger there for a moment, to remember God and grace and any good gift that has been poured out upon you, unasked or undeserved, you can return for a flash to the Source of your Being.

All the Psalms about the sun sing the same. We were made for the Great Light.
I spent years wondering about the opposite of grie I spent years wondering about the opposite of grief.

Would it be joy? To hold happiness again, to have tears turned into dancing?

Would it be gain? To find what was lost? To have arms full again around the ones I love?

Would it be peace? To breathe into the space of calm? To soak up healing as balm?

This morning I rose and realized: the opposite of grief is Easter.

Joy, gain, peace, hope, love, healing—all of it rolled into one and heaps more besides.

You know that awful feeling in grief’s first weeks, after someone you love has died, when you rise and remember yourself back into reality, and the grief-pain of loss washes over you again? The terrible turning moments that torpedo the day.

Easter Monday was the first morning that humans got to experience the utter opposite.

The undoing of what seemed undone. The resurrection of what looked impossible to restore.

The flip side of every grief and loss.

This morning I pictured the women rising again on Monday, the first ones to find and preach the Resurrection.

What joy & delight & hope & astonishment must have washed across their faces in their first few moments after waking, as they remembered themselves back into a world made new.

This is what every single one of us has yearned for, in the impossible imagination after loss. What if I could wake up and they would be back here again?

Exactly what all who loved him found when they woke up on Monday morning.

Now we only taste it, glimpse it, grasp it for a moment—but one day it will rise for us and never leave.

The opposite of grief is here.
To see others in pain while you are in pain— To To see others in pain
while you are in pain—
To reach out to the grieving
while others are grieving for you—
To lift up the least
while you are the greatest—
To speak to the suffering of women
while your own body is suffering—
To stop for others
while you walk the hardest road—

Until now I never noticed how much it meant that Jesus stopped for the women of Jerusalem.

He stops for the women of Ukraine, the women of Juarez, the women of Afghanistan, women everywhere who suffer and grieve and mourn.
 
He stops for them and for us. He tells us not to weep for him but to weep for this world, not to despair of the present but to steel ourselves for the future, not to lament unless we are willing to change.

What is he calling me to grieve? How is he calling me to change?

What might he see in us—our lives, our sorrows, our griefs, even our bodies—that we have not let ourselves lament?
Load More... Follow Laura on Instagram

Copyright © 2022 Laura Kelly Fanucci · site customizations by Jamie Jorczak

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Please click "accept" to keep reading. You can opt-out if you wish.Accept Reject Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.