back in school

I am learning many things lately - from attempting to master (ha!!) French (I am thinking I am going to be like the turtle as opposed to the hare - slow and steady wins the race), to learning about myself in conjunction with someone else, as well as learning about love in multiple avenues. Not only that, supposedly I have much yet to learn - from learning to drive a stick, to oh so much more.The thing about it, it being "learning" is pride. I knew, I know that pride is something that is oftentimes a battle, my battle. I can see it, but because of pride I don't like to admit it too much. (See the cycle). But when you start spending even more time with someone, and you start becoming more vulnerable, etc you realize that whole pride issue raises its ugly head a time or two.

Take for instance my attempt at learning French. My boyfriend speaks French - he is in fact from France, so you would think - seeing how logic minded I am, that I would enlist his help in learning the language, especially when it comes to pronounciation - he would be the perfect choice, but I do ask? Oh no, that would be far too easy and then I would have to practice with him, and I know I don't sound at all close to what it is supposed to sound like, so I'm keeping mum. I have a variety of methods - from reading children's books and dictionaries (in French) to listening to podcasts with pronounciation, and then trying to say it out loud myself - but I really don't know how close I am to sounding remotely like I am supposed to.

The ironic thing with this post is that I started this blog post yesterday, and then today I listened to Driscoll's latest about having Joy in Humility - a great message: challenging to me in light of my recent musings. Driscoll spoke of the difference between humility and pride, and the danger of pride and arrogance. He spoke to what humility is, that humility is expressing dependence. You can't be striving towards humility when you are holding on to feelings of independence, refusing to accept help where you need it - be it from God or the people God has placed in your life.

Marissa and I today were reading "Eloise in Paris" which has quite a few French words, and as we were reading it I mentioned to Marissa laughingly that I wasn't doing a good job of pronouncing the words. She looked at me and said that Guillaume should help me with the words. I laughed, and she further added, "Ellie, just ask him to help you." Oh from the mouths of babes.