You Got To Give It up!

During a formative period, Marvin Gaye declared "You got to give it up." in song. No hemming and hawing about it, the popular bard sang the "surrender song."  Give what up? He ended a confessed reticence that had paralyzed him--- until he stopped, looked, and recognized a replaceable loss.  Now bold, he became demanding! Groove Time!  Like others,  I might have just succumbed to the song's danceability.   It driving beat. I didn't stop long enough, though, to dissect its deeper meaning or well-intentioned advice. "You Got To Give It Up" hit the charts and rested for a while. 

The song's subtle meaning came later in the form of universal truth.  Each one of us has to give something up.  Sometime. Somewhere. Life's menu offers the opportunity to evade and avoid, but in the end, life cashes its check, to mix a metaphor. It sometimes takes the form of "If you dance to the music, you have to pay the piper."  Sometimes payment seems minor; most times, not.  Playing it safe, I settled pretty comfortably between the two.   I didn't make many waves so I had less to mop up than my brash friends or relatives.

Mother rationalized, "He never gives you more than you can bear" to explain some pretty arbitrary events.  While I routinely discounted her explanation, when Courtney, my younger daughter, died suddenly, its indisputability startled me, Smack dab in the middle of a grief storm. Of a surety, I realized that if the child of any of my siblings had died---with a warning or not---not one of them would have, could have,  survived.  Courtney's death left them mute and uncomfortable, but it was my Courtney who had died.  Not one of his or her own.  

How am I so sure?  Because I know them as only one who grew up with them could know.  I grew up watching and emulating them. Because I watched them when they thought I was engrossed in a book or otherwise distracted.  Because of the choice of words they'd use while trying to comfort me.  That, and other reasons too esoteric or incoherent to decipher., is how I know.   How?   I had seen how they reacted when they'd hear a close relative, friend, or even a celebrity they knew only from media, had died.  Death engendered a sensory acuity that I did not have before.  Nerve endings tingled unexpectedly and at the craziest times.  Things like that.  

What happens when I give "it" up and don't realize it for much too long?  Unannounced,  soul-searching enters the doors of heart and mind.  Confusion. Contradictions. Juxtapositions.  All kinds of emotions can overtake sanity if I'm not careful.  Rein it back in a bit, Girl.  Inhale through the nose. Exhale through the mouth. Do it again.  And again. Once more. Now, rest.  Let breathing normalize and allow the room to stop spinning.  Do a total of five reps.  Prepare for the next ride on the rollercoaster of grief.

"Why should I feel discouraged, Why should the shadows come
Why should my heart be lonely, And long for heav'n and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant Friend hs He:
His eye is on the sparrow, And I know H watches me."