It rained on the day we were married, thirty-eight years ago this week. A gully-washer as we used to say. But I don’t remember that. When someone mentioned it nearly twenty years later, I argued. In my memory the day was sunny, birds were singing, and rose petals were floating from the sky.

When I scoffed at the rain story, Wendell started reminding me of details. How it stormed so badly his big brother could barely see the road while driving us away from the church. I have no memory of that. How we snuck back to our little house to spend the first night and then shivered for hours because we didn’t have any matches to light the heating stove. Oh, yes. I do remember that. Maybe it had stormed after all.

And it has gone on like that for years. When I look back over our sickness and health, richer or poorer, till-death-do-us-part-and-it-might-be-today, I mostly see sunshine and bluebirds. If I concentrate, I can conjure up the details of darker days. I can hear the thunder of old arguments and see the lightning of great loss. But I never actually feel the rain.

I think mercy does that. Forgiving others as we ourselves have been forgiven keeps us living in the sunshine here on Mercy Street.