France, French, and Fruition

...We awoke “early” and headed uptown to catch the 8:00 bus. I dozed off throughout the whole trip occasionally awakening to see green hillsides spotted with rocks passing by on one side and out the other window was the Mediterranean, cool as a cucumber. France welcomed my program-mates and me with lots of wind, much less inhabited streets than Barcelona, and a surprisingly high amount of English spoken (music to my ears). I did feel foreign at times with the rapid French being spoken all around me but I had to laugh to myself as I thought that as crazy as it sounds to my ears, they could just simply be talking about last nights re-run of their favorite TV series. Another familiarity found in France was the meal times; it was a pleasure to return to 7:00 dinners, an absolute delight. Haha! The French people love joking around with Americans and getting a reaction out of them. This varied all the way from two ladies joking around with me at a bakery and yelling ludacris profanity in English at the top of their lungs as they fetched me my croissant (really funny), all the way to a girl in our program nearly getting into a full blooded scuffle with one particularly French, French man. Safe to say our hosts kept it interesting. France offered some beautiful towns, awesome graffiti, some great garage sales, lots of skipping stones at the beach, some windy late nights, and my personal favorite was the bathtub in my hotel room, which I basked in the glory of quite frequently. On my last morning there I woke up early, soaked in some scolding hot water, and went for an extremely pleasant walk about through the floating gardens near our hotel. It was a peaceful way to “slip out the door” and out of France as I walked through the fog while the sun was still low in the sky.

  After a windy late night and of course a bath the next day I sat relaxing in the room as Chad snoozed away on the bed next to mine. A quick knock got me to my feet and I let our friend David into the room. As I closed the door he seemed to make a beeline straight to where I had been sitting and he picked up the Bible I had just put down. Not something your average study abroad student carries around I guess. After asking if I was “religious” he followed it up with an innocently curious, “why?”. It wasn’t that profound of a question and I should’ve had an easy time having an obvious answer, right? Wrong. I couldn’t find one. I just sputtered out what was on the edge of my conscious and what the first thing my sleep deprived mind could come up with. I sleepily said/yawned-out something along the lines of,

“It brings me peace and when I live the way that Jesus instructed in here, (holding the bible) I end up better off than if I had gone at it alone”.

That answer surprised me a bit, definitely not my average response. Also not the answer that I would have written down if you hade given me more time. That’s for sure. But it was undoubtedly, unmistakably the answer straight from my heart.

My premeditated response was out the window and the truth just fumbled out of my mouth before I really thought about it. It was so refreshing being asked that question when my guard was so low. What I realized is that I typically hear sermons at chapel and church where I am spoon-fed the answer to these sorts of questions. When they are asked I just pull that lecture from my back pocket and I have a fail proof response. But from being away from the sermons and other influences for so long, my answer was entirely based off the conversations of my mind and my frequent reading about the stories of Jesus. Simple as that. As David left later on I repeated that simple yet stumping question a bit more in my head and I took it further… I literally believe I will live forever because of what Jesus has done. I will be on this earth or with Jesus in heaven. One or the other, but it is because of Jesus only that I get to live forever. That is what I think Paul gets at when he states, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord”…because anything we are… we are only able to be that because of Jesus.
For so many reasons I am extremely thankful for knowing Jesus and all the people who have taught me about him. It’s the biggest and most life-changing thing I have ever had in my life and I know it will continue to be…