No more school....and other thoughts.

PTL! Today I finished my last day of school for a whole year while I am in China. That's pretty crazy.
Recently, I have been thinking a lot about actually moving to China and being over there for a year. I am at the same time really excited and pretty nervous, but I feel the Lord is excited that I am going and this encourages me daily. I don't know why, but I feel like this next season in my life is going to be a big growth season for me. That Jesus is going to bring me to places where I have nowhere else to go but Him. Thoughts that come to mind when I think about this are probably half and half of first fears and then excited expectations. Fears of lonliness and homesickness, and excited expectations of experiences of the Lord's presence and getting to know Jesus in ways that would be harder to come to or maybe even impossible in this point in time if I weren't in China.

Right now I am reading a book about a missionary lady named Isobel Kuhn. She's a really neat Christian woman who really sought to put Jesus first everyday. Well in the book she talks about a season in her life where the Lord brings her to a place where Jesus takes away a lot of the places where she would run to and where her affections lied. She references Gal. 5:24 "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." and talks about how Jesus wants us to become like Him so much that we have to nail even our affections to the cross. Not that we don't love the people around us, such as family and friends, but that we would first go to Jesus and He would be our first and ultimate refuge and where our affections lie.
I feel Jesus wants this for me also. That Jesus would be my hiding place, my refuge.