This morning, I opened Lamentations and found the ancient sentence waiting: “His mercies never end. They are new every morning.”

Outside in the wild blackberry thickets, my peonies look as if they’d been unfurled by a botanist, her hands peeling back each thin petal, the yellow pollen sticking to her fingers. The Pretty Polly hedge roses by the potting shed were throwing pinkness into the air as if color were a form of testimony. My younger self believed that mercy was something I felt when the day finally behaved. Relief. Joy. Or just a loosening of knots in my chest.

My mother said mercy was a verb. Not a passive, esoteric word. Not a guarantee of peace after a storm. It required attention and involvement. She didn’t sit at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. She’d cut the peonies before the rain split the petals. Next, she’d refill the vases. Sweep the walkway. Bake a lemon cake. Pour sunflower seeds into the red hopper. 

Yet, in the months after my father died, I remember how she hesitated before getting out of bed, thinking she wasn’t quite ready to open herself to the rough side of a morning. But she’d do it anyway.  

Lamentations doesn’t hurry past grief. It sits with it and names the ruin. And then, almost unbelievably, it provides mercy. And if this mercy asks us to notice the peeled-back rawness of a day, it also promises that God will meet us in the weeds.

So today, I fill a chipped Ironstone teapot with water and add the peonies. The roses have tiny stems, no bigger than green embroidery thread, making me wonder how the blossoms hold up their heads. Yet they do. I set the vases on the yard-sale desk, a walnut beauty with elegantly turned legs. It’s a scratchy mess, but it holds keys, a dog leash, and a stack of books. Sometimes, when the light is slanting low, faithfulness can look like pink petals on a scarred walnut table. 

If you’re looking for a small mercy, open your front door. Hang wind chimes. Sow zinnia seeds before a downpour. Bring fresh water to the birds.

A new morning doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.

It means we get to start over. 

It means we wake up and there’s still something to notice.