This is the first in a series. I love Easy Listening music. For me, it is therapeutic and educational. I enjoy trying to put myself into the experience of the song, and understand the writer's perspective on life. I have a difficult time doing this on occasion. I was stumped recently on the meaning of a song and asked my 18-year old son what it meant to be " between the moon and NYC." He explained it was a metaphor for being between your dreams and reality. Oh.

Can You Release Me (Madonna?) played this morning and I decided to begin with this song. The song begins with her saying she does not want to give up, but that it is time she face reality ("two feet on the ground"). The reality seems to be that her lover will not come down off his "high horse." If he is not going to mellow, she will not take any chances with her "weakened heart which is slowly healing." The song grapples with her difficulty of releasing him, while she is begging him to release her, and by the end of the song she has decided the only course of action open to her—"stop coming around my door, cause you won't find what you're looking for." She knows it's "time to be free," stop "wasting time," and face the reality of the hopelessness of this relationship. But there is a problem: "What is this power you've got over me?"

I cry when I hear this song (and many others) because I know firsthand the pain involved in learning to release someone you deeply love, and stop expecting that person to meet emotional needs only you can meet for yourself. It takes my breath away when I have to deliver this message to a hurting husband: "When you let go of her, she will probably return to you, able to truly give her self, her soul, to you. If you continue to try to control ("high horse") her, you take the chance of driving her over a line she really does not want to breach."

I believe people are attracted to people they need. I believe there is an element of sincere love involved in this. But there is also an unreasonable, selfish element which is revealed against the backdrop of disappointment and disillusionment when expectations are dashed against the boundaries of love. That element can be expressed by (generally speaking) the woman asking, "Am I powerful enough to make my man happy?"; and the man asking, "Is it fair to expect this woman to make me happy?" Both questions imply that each much wrestle with hopelessness, emptiness, and love addiction/abandonment issues.

Both must become comfortable with distance, a distance which reminds each of one's uniqueness, individuality, and individual responsibility to Christ. Being responsible to Him entails submitting to His Working in our Soul which leads us more and more to say with Paul, "My sufficiency (power) is of Christ," or to say with Christ, "My meat (fulfillment) is to do the will of my Father."