Surrender feels like failure.
It feels depressing, like giving up.
There is a darkness to it, a weight to it—the unwilling
outmanned, outmaneuvered, surrounded, and pressed to defeat.
Surrender feels like exhaustion.
It feels compressing, like yielding up the last breathless bits
of me.
And yet You call me to this laying down of arms jazz
in exchange for Your loving arms.
And I find that surrender to You is not as much giving up as
over—not as much failing as falling into a tender pull,
deference to one more wise and able, after all my best ideas
have faltered and failed,
after all my excuses have dried in my mouth,
after all my tears have washed away nothing.
It is the unclenching of a fist, the unmasking of a façade.
It is the baring of a war-torn will, the stripping of all that
chokes and hinders.
And I find that surrender to You is not as much like crying
“uncle,”
but more like a hallelujah.
