Weight (or Mercy 2)

Weight (or Mercy 2)

Fault is the feeling that claws the space inside my ribcage because I forgot to serve the corn I bought to go with dinner. The dish sits in the refrigerator reminding me that I let things slip sometimes even though I spend most of my energy making sure I never, ever do. I pay way more in apologies than a can of corn even costs. No one else cares about the corn. Don’t beat yourself up over small things, they say. It feels bigger than that because I care and want to be known for caring. I do beat myself up. I bear bruises from my own hand over top of where the claws carve fault lines inside my chest.

Shame is the smothering weight that presses down on the back of my neck when my voice hangs in the air after choosing the wrong words‒the ones that drip with dorkiness or come out like darts when I didn’t mean them to. There are always witnesses to those misfires. The air in the room rings with awkward silence. I can’t suck the words back in. I am suddenly too big for the space, and I can’t hide far enough behind my own red face.

Regret is molten lead, hot and heavy and oppressive. It clings to my skin and seeps in. Or maybe it starts from within and seeps out through my pores. Either way regret is born of loss, and I toss that loss from hand to hand every other day: It’s not my fault. It is completely my fault. At the apex of the back and forth it balances at partially my fault, and that’s usually okay. Regardless, I lost someone who was entrusted to my care, and the heavy coat of regret seems impossible to shrug off.

Guilt is the conflagration of the anger of the world, seven billion fires burning righteous wrath right into you because of what you did. And it was bad. You choked the life out of a man and the world witnessed it. You can’t take it back, and you can’t ever pay for it. How do you live with yourself now? How do you survive inside the interminable unquenchable firestorm of What You Did while the world watched? It must be choking the life out of you like seven billion righteously angry knees upon your windpipe.

Mercy is a strange feeling to have toward you. Maybe mercy comes from my intimate knowing of fault lines formed by forgotten corn and the weight of wrong words and the loss of a prodigal son. The deepest grooves hurt the most when you can’t deny you carved them there yourself.

And, man, you can’t deny this one.

Sin causes the deepest cut, pumps in the most noxious air, lays on the heaviest weight, and burns with the most blistering beam of heat in existence. Faults and flaws, mistakes and regrets can be remedied by mind over matter, truth over trash, but sin? It’s the real deal, and you can’t shake it off, and you can’t stand up under it. It’s the weight of the deed and the weight of the seven billion stones you deserve to be buried under. I feel this weight for you, even while I feel the weight of the stone in my own hand, cocked and ready to hurl at your head. The weight of them all, or even one, would crush the breath out of you.

But instead, it crushed Him. Do you understand this? You need to know this. You need to feel the weight of What You Did and understand this: The infinite weight of a world’s-worth of sins bore its knee down on the Son of God. The moment of the turning of Father’s face from sin-disfigured Son was so much darker than the blackness blinding your eyes. It was so much heavier than the pound of flesh you owe for snuffing out one infinitely precious life. It was so much heavier than 7 billion times thousands of words hanging, backs turning, knees crushing, fists swinging, gas pumping, bullets zinging, whips slashing, thorns jabbing, nails piercing, and spears stabbing. It was so much heavier than your zeal, or your ignorance, or your hate, or your pride, or your adrenaline, or. . . what even was that, anyway? It doesn’t matter. It was infinitely blacker than the poison of your darkness and so much heavier than all of it, yet somehow the mercy of that one moment heals every single gaping wound‒theirs, mine. . .

And yes, man, even yours.

This is mercy.

“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” ‒Isaiah 53:5

erinrmsocha 5-29-2020