A Mercy Observed
Written by Carol Havlat
Based on my FOCUS missionary brother’s recommendation, I first read A Severe Mercy in college and fell in love with it immediately. I was a lifelong C.S. Lewis fan and had practically lived in the world of Narnia as a child, devouring the books (and rereading them, over and over!), pretending that my shaggy pony was a warhorse named Bree, and feeling my young heart break and rise with hope in the last pages of The Last Battle.
I was more than willing to read a book with C.S. Lewis’s letters! It didn’t take long for me to love the main characters themselves. I quickly related to Van’s love of dogs, descriptions of his beloved childhood home on his family’s country farm, and Davy’s feisty wit and adventurous spirit—I felt like we were friends by the end of the book. At that time, I dreamed of a time when I would find the love of my life, and we would read all the same books and go on marvelous adventures together. Although, as a true child of the Plains, the idea of living on a boat, sailing, and catching/eating fish every day wasn’t appealing. My version looked more like a farmhouse overlooking pastures of our cattle, eating beef, eggs, and garden vegetables that we grew ourselves, reading books next to a winter fireplace, and hiking with our children.
My dreams and prayers for a remarkable love came true a few years after college. I fell in love with my husband. Today, our house overlooks a pasture with hills of waving grass and our herd of cattle; we produce much of our food on our farm, and though my farmer husband prefers to read farming magazines and bull catalogs instead of classic literary works, we are technically reading together around the fireplace on cold winter nights. We discussed the “shining barrier” that Davy and Van built around their relationship, implementing the same mindset in our marriage, with the difference that we had God inside the barrier with us. I remember thinking about the beautiful life and love we were building in the “heights and the depths,” as Van puts it. “Here’s Hail! To the rest of the road!” seemed an apt anthem.
The heartbreak in our story came with finding out we could not have biological children. The years of infertility took a toll on my heart and my faith, striking at the very core of my identity in my relationship with God. I sought comfort in my self-reliance, but all of my experience, skills, talents, and work ethic were powerless against infertility. I would try to find a way to embrace my cross or to see it as a mercy, but all I could feel was this experience hurting me and a God who wasn’t showing up to rescue me.
I began to view God as a distant, exacting taskmaster who was only concerned with the big, important matters of the world and didn’t care if my desires were collateral damage in His quest to save it. I thought that children were a blessing and gift bestowed on those with whom God was pleased and that I was failing somehow. As I write this, my heart aches for the abandonment and rejection I felt. I now know that the Hound of Heaven (as C.S. Lewis calls him) had not forgotten me and was coming to rescue me.
Over the last few years, He has healed my wounds and loosened the knots in my heart. My husband and I were blessed to adopt two sons, who are the delight of our lives and whose presence has strengthened our marriage and caused us to grow closer (thus confirming Lewis’s sage advice about parenting to Van). At one time, I thought healing and wholeness would be found in the gift of our sons, but I know better now.
Through lots of healing work, beautiful books, prayer, and retreats, I came to see that my wounds went far deeper than infertility. I sought to repair my relationship with God first, and He met me in my deepest heart. For the first time, I saw the lies the Enemy had caused me to believe about the goodness of God and the barriers I had put up against my heavenly Father—the barriers that “only Love Himself with a severe mercy could breach.” I no longer saw infertility as a cross meant to crush me but as a tool to help me get to heaven.
Infertility decreased my self-reliance, my sins of comparison and competition, and made me realize how much I need God to be in control, not myself. Then I saw how adoption could teach me what it means to be a loving adoptive parent, as our God is a loving adoptive Father. “You have received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba Father!’ (Romans 8: 15-17). I cannot say that I am now completely reliant on God, that my desire for control is less, or that I am a perfect adoptive parent—I’m not sure I will find that on this side of heaven. I still struggle with our infertility, and it is sometimes an unbearably heavy cross. But I finally understand what it means to be given a “severe mercy” that drives you into the arms of your Creator.
I’ve reread A Severe Mercy several times since college, but I only fully grasped the fullness and beauty of this book this year. I have also read other works by Vanauken and thoroughly enjoyed them. One of my favorite aspects of reading is seeing ourselves in the characters of the books we read, and I can’t help but feel a sense of kinship with Davy and Van… even more so now that I know more of their story.
My sisters combed through used bookstores to find a copy of The Little Lost Marion, which tells the story of the baby girl Davy placed for adoption as a teenager. As an adoptive mother with a deep love for my sons’ birthmothers, I fell in love with Davy and Van all over again while reading about Davy’s brave love for her child and Van’s efforts to eventually find Marion and build a relationship with her and her family. I hope to meet them someday, Under the Mercy.
About Carol Havlat
Carol is a wife to Ross and mother to Isaiah and James. She is a nurse who teaches A&P at a local Catholic college seminary. She spends her free time with her hands in the dirt of her garden, her nose in a book, sitting on horseback, or chasing her free-range children and chickens.
About Well-Read Mom
In Well-Read Mom, women read more and read well. Our hope is to deepen the awareness of meaning hidden in each woman’s daily life, elevate the cultural conversation, and revitalize reading literature from books. If you would like to have us help you select worthy reading material, we invite you to join and read along with us. We are better together! For information on how to start or join a Well-Read Mom group visit our website wellreadmom.com
