The Difference Between Mercy and Grace

Let's close the book on these jailhouse blues.

Sunday night, I bit the bullet.

I reached out to my brother’s girlfriend and paid the difference between what she had raised and what was still owed to get him out. I did it because I needed peace. I needed sleep. I needed this whole awful thing to move toward some kind of end.

It did not bring immediate peace, and it sure did not bring sleep.

I barely slept Sunday night, and by morning I had a migraine. Monday came with all the usual misery: head pain, nausea, nerves wound so tight they might as well have been piano wire. I missed work. I spent the day laid up in my own house, sick with anxiety, wondering whether the money had been enough, whether they would actually release him, whether this whole mess would drag into one more day and then another and then another.

Monday came and went, and still, I heard nothing.

Sometime in the middle of another sleepless night, I found myself needing our heaviest cat draped across my body before I could settle down at all. There is something humbling about being an adult, married, with a job, and being a reasonably competent person by all outside appearances, to suddenly realize the only thing standing between you and a full nervous collapse is one very fat well-fed cat.

Now it is Tuesday, and I am told he will be released. Maybe today. Hopefully today. Supposedly today. Surely by the time this article’s scheduled publication triggers he will be sitting in a bathtub with a rubber ducky and too much soap.

No amount of dieting or exercise could make me feel lighter than I do at this moment. I am full of relief yet worn out by it. I feel almost giddy; except I am too tired to be properly giddy. I feel like somebody has finally cracked a window in a hot car I’ve have been trapped in for weeks.

And the strangest part is this: after all this waiting, all this worrying, all this carrying on from a thousand miles away, I don’t even think I want to see him right now.

Not fresh out. Not in whatever condition jail has left him in.

I want him to go bathe. I want him to get a decent haircut, because at this point his hair is longer than mine and neither of us know how to style it. I want him to eat real food. I want him to sleep somewhere that danger is not lurking around every corner and where nobody is watching him use the bathroom. I want him to wake up, go to work, act right, and show the world that he has learned something. Anything. A moral lesson would be lovely. Basic fear-based civilization would also do.

I would say I hope he has found the fear of God, but it is not God who puts you in jail for failure to pay child support.

So, I asked my mother to feed him and told his girlfriend to book him a haircut and send me the bill.

And somewhere in all of this, somewhere between the sleepless nights and the headache and the dread, I realized something had changed in me. At some point on Sunday, I moved from “I do not know,” “I cannot,” “I had hoped,” into something steadier:

I can.
I will.
I do hope.
I will do what I can to offer grace.

Lying there in the dark one of those nights, I remembered a sermon my Pappaw preached years ago at Winona Church of God. I was probably ten when I heard it, but it may be the most important lesson he ever taught me. He preached on the difference between mercy and grace.

Mercy is not getting the punishment you deserve.

Grace is getting the good you did not earn.

Mercy is God withholding judgment.

Grace is God giving love, help, belonging, and salvation anyway.

As a child, I don’t think I understood there was much daylight between those two things. They sounded close enough to be sisters. But they are not the same at all. Not even close.

And that distinction came back to me now when I needed it most.

All this time I kept waiting for somebody else to do something. I kept waiting on the jail, the court, my family, his ex-wife, the whole machine of consequences and conflict, to finally show him some mercy. To ease up. To let go. To hand down some lesser punishment than the one he had been living in.

But somewhere along the way I stopped waiting for mercy.

I decided what he needed was grace.

Not because he earned it. He did not.

Not because he deserved it. He did not.

Not because I suddenly forgot every lie, every scheme, every frustration, every reason to keep my wallet shut and my hands clean. I did not.

I chose it because I could.

I chose it because I love him.

I chose it because hope, however ragged and tired and foolish it may sometimes look, is still better than resentment.

Maybe this will bite me in the ass later. That is entirely possible. Maybe this money will have bought nothing but temporary relief and a fresh set of bad decisions. Maybe he will get out today and be right back in trouble tomorrow. Maybe twenty-five days in his own personal hell have not changed one thing except his appetite and his temper.

But maybe not.

Maybe twenty-five days was enough to scare something into him. Maybe exhaustion will do what lectures could not. Maybe embarrassment will do what love could not. Maybe he will come out wanting quiet, cleanliness, work, food, and a chance to be decent.

Today, that is what I am hoping for.

And I think that is one way Becoming Episcopalian has shaped me. It has not made me stupid, and it has not made me blind. I am not confusing grace with naivety. I can still see the evidence. I can still feel the anger. I can still name every reason this may have been unwise.

But I was able, for one moment at least, to set all that aside and offer help that was neither earned nor deserved.

Just because I can.

Just because I hope.

Just because I love.

There is a freedom in that I did not expect.

Tonight, if all goes the way they say it will, I think I will finally sleep again.

Thanks for the free therapy, readers!

Now, let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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Update: Yes, he was released today, 4/21/2026. When asked what he wanted when he got out, he declared: “a cheeseburger and a real cigarette.”

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