Surrender

Lay it down and rest. Cease your striving. Give it to God.

A sweet Alabama friend of mine whose speech was rich with long, fluid vowels had a habit of saying, when he saw me struggling a little too hard to make a point or fix a problem, "Honey, give it up!" There was always a little pause after "Honey," as if to soften the harsh advice with a reminder of affection.

It was good advice, judiciously given--not a general life strategy but a matter of discernment: surrender when it's time to surrender. Stop fighting, insisting, clinging, hoping against hope, pouring your energies into a fruitless endeavor. The advice was also offered with a gentle amusement that invited me to laugh at myself, regroup, and let go with grace.

In a culture that has normalized militaristic language and appropriated it oddly, sometimes deceptively, in medicine, microbiology, economic and social theory, addiction, and religious life, not to mention athletics, surrender doesn't fare well. Teachers, coaches, physical therapists, oncologists, parents and cheerleaders urge us: "Never give up," "Never say die," "Persist," "Hang in there," and "Stay strong."  The writers of Hebrews gives the message biblical authority and spiritual signficance: "...let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."

Most of us thrive on those encouraging words. We run a little harder, a little longer, put up with pain, run the experiment again, play out the end game, and, win or lose, make it to the last hurrah.

But sometimes a little voice--maybe no more than a whisper--offers a different invitation: surrender. Or, more colloquially, "Honey, give it up." Lay it down and rest. Cease your striving. Breathe. Put it into the hands of those who may carry it for you. Give it to God.

My mother, a cheerful, practical woman of deep and resilient faith often advised me, when I brought up a nagging problem, to "Give it to God." It took me years of maturing before I could hear that message as more than an easy out or a pious cliché—years of witnessing how she, in fact, did that. She prayed and let go. Prayed and trusted and turned her renewed attention to the day's demands. She surrendered, or "gave over," as we might more accurately render the ancient meaning, the difficult students in her classroom, the question of how to pay for car repair, the bitterness she might have carried about her own losses or financial constraints or institutional politics or petty disputes among gossipy womenfolk. She opened her hands and handed them over.

We can surrender to the new demands a moment makes--the interruptions, a neighbor's urgencies, the cry of a child. We can give up, as Twelve-Step programs wisely advise, our flailing efforts to control our own lives, acknowledge that we are powerless, and turn to a higher power.

Paradoxically, I find, when I do that, my energy is freed to reengage in a more fruitful, imaginative, hopeful, even joyful way with what seemed so daunting. Surrender allows us to reframe. In its unlikely way it shows us one way in which all things may be made new.