A Pleasant Dream of Learning French

I dreamt last night I was learning French.

In my dream, learning French consisted of singing "Alouette," the kid's song about plucking a bird. I remember singing it and interacting with a friend of mine from Friendship, ME. We were outside of HAPY and Suttle Hall on the Gardner-Webb quad. She was being mean to people and I didn't understand why. I don't remember if I asked her not to be mean, but I moved on to someone else. I can't place the next person in my dream as anyone specific in my life. We walked from the quad towards Royster. We saw guys laying out working on tans. Either they wanted us to join or my new friend wanted us to join. He did, I didn't. He started play fighting with another guy and tried to get me to hang out while I was wandering around. I don't think I wanted to be involved in play fighting, but I saw they were having fun and was glad to be wanted. I still had "Alouette" in my head, because I was learning French.

When I woke up, I was disturbed by the meanness of my childhood friend. I was disturbed by the fighting, even if it was playful. I was disturbed that I was alone. The dream itself didn't conjure any negative feelings, but I was bummed about it. I stayed in bed, thinking about it while waiting for my alarm to go off in 10 minutes. When it did, I hit the snooze button.

Another rough dream? This is getting old.

I never hit snooze.

Later, I thought about the dream again (because "Alouette" was still in my head). I didn't focus on the part of me that I left on the quad or the new part of me I shyly smiled at from a distance, unsure of how I feel about him. Instead, I focused on the consistent part of me in the dream, the me learning French.

I took that shy smile from my dream for myself. I did have a pleasant dream. I was learning something new, something to better myself. It may be hard to determine externally and internally how to learn, what to learn, and in which direction to go (I wandered a bit aimlessly after the dream friend started play fighting), but I can still make progress.

I'm journeying. I see an ultimate destination in the kingdom, in God through Christ. I don't know where the little destinations are, but I keep evaluating in light of God and that kingdom, as much as possible, since I'm not always sure where those things are.

But we continue in faith, not knowledge. Not confirmation and assurance per se, faith. Embracing new things when faith dictates, even if I don't understand why, even if I never thought faith would lead me here, even if I don't know where to go next.

Faith.
Learning French.

Voilà.