There are some days here in France that I feel like a genius. I say exactly what I need to, the French understand me completely and I receive an unsolicited smile from the local baker. Those are very encouraging days. But then there are the days where I stumble over my words. The days where even simple French phrases come spilling out of my mouth haphazardly and I quickly receive a correction from the person I am speaking with. These are the days where I am forced to revert back to basic sentences, feeling like a child as I strain to remember simple, daily vocabulary. I am unable to say, “Could you please pass me the bread?’, so I blurt out, “Bread, please?” It is these days where I feel more like a 4 year-old than a linguist.
The most interesting part about all this is that I am sure God places these days in my life on purpose. One reason is because these days, the childlike ones, closely follow the days where I am on top of the world. You see, God knows how quickly I am to congratulate myself and to tell myself how great a job I am doing, as if it wasn’t God who provides the ability to learn language in the first place. So even though these days are tough, I know that God simply wants his child to learn a little humility with his French.