French Lessons

For some reason, I took eight years of French in school. Four years in elementary/middle school; and four years in high school. My plan was to go to France with my best friend Marie after graduation. But life intervened, and I moved to Muncie to manage a pet store and Marie married a computer programmer from Vietnam. Our freshman year in high school, Marie and I would do silly things like go to Casual Corner at the mall and speak French to each other (badly, I'm sure). The salesperson would come up and ask whether she could help us and Marie would explain that I was her cousin from France and didn't speak a word of English. She would use a horrible French-American accent (which probably sound more like New Orleans than anything) and we would dissolve in laughter after the poor unassuming salesperson walked away, completely convinced we had totally fooled her.

So that's about the extent of my French ability--lots of invested time and study energy for very little gain...a dream that was never realized and an embarrassing memory of how cool I wasn't in high school. :) But this morning, I woke up thinking about the phrase avec pleasure (not sure I spelled that right), but it means, of course "with pleasure." The thought was, when we're doing something, why not do it avec pleasure? Isn't that the essence of joy, of gratitude? What about the phrase, "It's my pleasure," when someone says "thank you." Do we mean it when we say that? I want to. I want to think more about pleasure, enjoyment, life abundant. I think it honors God. And it makes the sun shine brighter.

Hey, maybe French class gave me something after all. :)