Surrender

I can still picture it...rusty orange pews, head bowed, eyes closed...an alter call and the song "I Surrender All" sung in it's entirety, sometimes two times over.  My lips are moving.  I know this song by heart by now.  The words meaning almost nothing to me.  I've sung them too many times...it's become routine.  It's just another thing between me and lunch.  Three words and I have not a clue just what I am giving breath to.

Surrender - To yield to any influence, emotion, passion, or power. To give up one's self into the power of another.

Fast forward twenty years.  I am running a distance I never thought I would run.  I am at mile ten and the song comes on : "And I Surrender all to You, all to You." is playing in my ears.  Tears fill my eyes and for once in my life, I get a glimpse of what that means.  Pain is rushing through my body, filling up my lungs...my current circumstances flash before me.  My husband is unemployed and has been for over a year, benefits have run out, I am consumed with worry, overtaken with the need to control and fix everything...the weight is heavy.  And in this moment, at mile ten, all I can think about is surrender...not only to this race I am running, but also to The One that has set this path before me. 

This surrender is something I have to fight with every single long run, every single race.  When I am fighting with myself in my head...when I want to quit, when my body is done...I have to surrender.

Just as on the road, daily I must surrender to Him.  When I am wrestling with my own desires and what I know He wants from or for me...when life has me beat down and tired....when I want to throw in the towel and take the easier path...I must surrender.  I must take all that is weighing heavy on me...I must take my need to control....I must take my worry and doubt...just take all of it, and lay it at His feet.

A song, that comes with such negative memories...jaded...is as if I am hearing them with new ears.  My prayer is that these three words, "I. Surrender. All." would be ever so powerful in my life.  I have felt the weight of life on my shoulders when I shouldn't have been shouldering it in the first place...His yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:30)...Surrender All.