Sunday afternoon I am driving down the road when I see my neighbor teaching his grandson how to ride a bike. It is a perfect spring day. The sun shines on my neighbor’s thinning hair and on the golden hair of the grandchild. Along the road almond trees bloom. In the distance snow-covered mountains look as close as my backyard.

As I watch my neighbor push the little red bike, balanced on training wheels, the grandchild grinning for all his worth, I suddenly and profoundly feel God’s presence. It’s a heavenly moment until the Lord whispers, “Beloved, you are angry with me.” I am about to argue the point with God, when, in a flash, He shows me all the reasons I am angry. God is not vague. People and places vividly come to mind involving divorce, cancer, and suicide. Suicide is the kicker for me.

Tears splash down my cheeks. I recall another Sunday afternoon with this same neighbor several years earlier. I am driving down this very road when I come upon my neighbor’s house and death is at his door.

I flash back further in years to another front yard where I sit on the freshly mowed grass beside the body of my favorite uncle. My uncle is covered with a blanket awaiting the morgue’s taxi. It is so like my uncle to have mowed the lawn before killing himself.

Flashing deeper into my soul, just hours earlier probably after mowing his lawn, my uncle comes to my house to give me his record collection. We talk all afternoon, the whole time he holds my one-year-old daughter on his lap. My uncle laughs. He cuddles Cami while sharing his favorite memories with me. He even talks about Jesus. I look at the records he’s brought. Pick out my favorite one. Point to a song I loved when I was a child, El Paso, by Marty Robbins.

I don’t notice that as my uncle leaves he takes the Marty Robbins record from its album cover and carries it back home with him. In his living room, he puts the record on his stereo. Turns up the volume so he can hear El Paso in the garage where he has work to do. Before the work, he writes a note. Short and sweet and to the point. “I’ve made my peace with Jesus,” is the last line before he signs Love, Danny. My Uncle then hangs himself in the garage and the work he’s done devastates our family.

The Marty Robbins’ record plays on in his living room, over and over repeating this song, El Paso. My grandmother finds my uncle in the garage. It’s been less than thirty minutes since his death. Must be her mother’s instinct that brought her here so quickly. She calls me and her first words are, “He’s done it.” Normally I’m a crier, but not a tear comes forth in the face of this shocking announcement. Not a single tear until I wake up the next morning having slept the shock away. Now I cannot stop crying.

This Sunday afternoon before passing my neighbor on the road where he is teaching his grandson to ride a bike, I am in a surly mood. For days I’d been irritable. Weeks really. Months perhaps. Thinking upon it, I realize I’ve been mad for some time. But my anger is down deep. Hiding. Not just from others, but from myself as well. Yet God sees my anger and today He calls me on it. I can’t believe He tells me that I’m angry in the middle of such a beautiful moment. Here I am marveling at spring upon the earth. My smiling neighbor with his grinning grandson. In this moment of profoundly sensing God’s love, He pinpoints my anger.

In the flash of God’s reckoning I see divorce riling me too. A couple who have ministered in our church for years have split. They aren’t the first Christian couple I know to shatter, actually there are many, but they are the first I have deeply admired and loved since becoming a Christian.

Then there are my cancer friends. More anger ensues. Precious Christians who have come to God’s altar for healing. We’ve laid hands on them. They’ve been anointed for healing by the elders of our church just as the Bible instructs. After their time at the altar, they appear to be healed. Even the doctors are impressed. But now the cancer is back. It will be a miracle if they spend this Easter on earth with their families I watch weep at the altar.

Another friend has fought cancer for years. She keeps running to Christ and He keeps healing her, but not fully. Last year I met her at the altar to pray. She stood before our pastor as he prayed over her and anointed her with oil. I stood behind her with my hands on her shoulders praying too. Our worship leader sang a beautiful song. I felt so close to God. Tears drenched us all. At the end of the prayer time, my friend turned to me. “I’m going to be okay,” she said with a radiant smile. Standing there with my friend at the altar, I catch a glimpse of heaven and in that moment I am ready to die with my friend if the cancer wins the day. Then the song ends and it is time to return to our shadowed seats in the congregation.

It is taking my seat in the dark that angers me after praying with my cancer friend who died a few weeks ago. And accepting my seat on the grass beside the body of my uncle. And the seat in my car as I drive up to my neighbor’s yard where his son died. “Stop allowing people I love to die!” I want to wail at God. But I’ve been raised to believe that wailing at God is not allowed. Yet I read the Bible and some of it sounds like wailing to me.

Then there is the lofty seat of judgment I perch upon before my divorcing Christian friends. How could they do this to Christ? To their Christian family? To each other and their own children? To younger Christians like me who have admired them so much? I agree with God that I’m angry and I feel pouty as a twelve-year-old whose all-knowing parent has just told her, “Take your seat because I said so.”

A few days later after major prayer, I view a fellow Christian’s blog. She has posted a song: Complete in Thee. The old hymn has been digitalized. I like it so much I stick it on my Facebook wall. And I listen to it several times a day until the anger in me breaks.

While I am writing this blog, my three-year-old son Garry James tells me that Mercy’s in the house. He says this several times to help me understand. All of a sudden it resonates in my heart: Mercy is in the house. I feel as if God has said this to me over my anger, over suicide, over cancer and divorce.

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.'” Lamentations 3:22-24.

The Mercy Garry James is talking about is actually our little rat terrier who replaced Bell, the rat terrier puppy my husband ran over in our driveway a few years back. I was so broken on the day that Bell died, but I can’t imagine life without our dog Mercy.

Garry James settles down with Mercy on the couch to watch Go Diego Go, his favorite video. The sweet little black and white dog cuddles up to him. Mercy is like that, she’s all about love. God is like that too. He says, “Beloved place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave” Song of Songs 8:6.

I need to hear this, that God’s love is as strong as death. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? … But thanks be to God! He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” 1Corinthians 15:55-56.