Five-Minute Friday: Stream-of-Conscious Surrender!

For today's post, I am following the one-word prompt from Kate at Heading Home. This has been a good way to keep me on track posting somewhat regularly. 

If you want to join, click that link to her blog. Every Friday is a new word, and the only rules are: 
Write for 5 minutes. 
Link your post on hers. 

It's pretty cool, and I find a new blog every week.
(Now if only I would make the time to revisit more often during the week.)
 
This week's one-word is "Surrender".
 
Timer starting...

Sometimes, the word-cue makes it difficult for me to narrow down my thoughts. In fact, my post today will simply be a list of different ideas "surrender" brings to mind, in no particular order:

~  I gave up a lot of control by getting rid of almost everything back home and moving to China two months ago.

~  Sometimes when we are out on errands, I simply surrender to my husband's wishes of what to do next or where to go. We may both have opinions, but if it doesn't matter in the long run, I say, "I'll do whatever you choose," and we continue happily. (He does the same for me.)

~  I have two contentious relationships with siblings that I have surrendered to prayer - we do not make direct contact, but I love them both and wish them good things.

~  My health is somewhat at the whim of Beijing: I walk a lot which is great; I eat more fresh and less processed foods, which is great; I watch the air quality daily, but don't always wear a mask when I should, so some days I'm blowing grey dust out of my nose (gross), which is not great; we have a terrible bed and I'm losing a lot of sleep, which is bad for my health.

~  Very recently, on a 24-hour train ride (an entire blog post in itself, which I intend to write next, so come back!), I surrendered to a panic attack when I awoke in the middle of the night, on my 3rd-tier bunk in a shared room, and could feel the ceiling closing in on me. I was up for 5 hours in the middle of the night, in increasingly cold (we were heading north) temperatures, rather than attempt to sleep in such close quarters. 

~  I hate to keep harping on about all the changes from moving overseas, but it's basically the crux of my existence these days! Before moving, we prayed a lot and came to the conclusion that, as difficult as it would be, this was God's will, and we had to surrender to it. 

Time's up. More than 5 minutes, actually. Sorrynotsorry!