Learning to Love: The Journey Part 2

My arrival here, was about as difficult as I expected.  Sometimes I am tempted to leave sooner, than later.  I am a runner.  Well, not a runner, but an avoider. Not that I avoid problems, problems are easier for me to face than people who are difficult to get along with.  I tend to avoid encounters with people who I do not feel comfortable around, which seems harmless, and quite natural.  I avoid awkward situations, that’s all.

However, I know that these times are simply challenging lessons in the course of learning to love.  Loving those who always make you feel so warm, and nice, does not prove how great your love is, anyone can do that.  It’s about treating others with love when it is most difficult to.

I say this because this is my current struggle, my current lesson.

Love is not just saying you love someone.The biblical definition of love, to me, truly describes it.  Be it love towards family, friends, or a significant other.

I wanted to break down the characteristics of love found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (AMP) to be able to go back to it, and see where I am failing, and what I need to work on.

• Love endures long and is patient and kind:  If it has to endure long, and be patient it most likely indicates that the other party is going to be difficult, and we have to respond with kindness, and patience.  Love is what fills in the gap on our scale, when we weigh how bad the other person treats us, against how we treat them.  Love enables us to be kind to those that are not kind with us.
• Love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy:  Basically, if we love someone we should be glad when they have something that we wanted.  Love teaches us to let go our egos, and think of someone else’s happiness rather than ours.
• It is not boastful or vainglorious:  Meaning, when we love we are not concerned with always being the center of attention, and do not constantly feel the need to brag.  Love gives us the flexibility to be able to do this sometimes, and still not lose our identity.
• Love does not display itself  haughtily, it is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride):  Love’s ego is mostly absent, in the sense that a person who has truly grasped the concept of love, and operates in it, is usually humble when dealing with others.
• It is not rude (unmannerly)  and  does not act unbecomingly: (Pretty self-explanatory) 
• Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights  or  its                own way,  for  it is not self-seeking: So… it means we are not first priority when we truly love others.  Not that we are worth nothing, quite the contrary.  You are supposed to love people as much as you love yourself.   When you are full of love, you know you are complete whatever happens, so putting yourself as the priority is not of utmost importance.
• …it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]:  What it tells us is that a person who loves is quick to forgive, and does not dwell on the wrong they suffered, does not take things to heart.  Love enables them to let go of these things, and forgive.
• It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right  and  truth  prevail: Also self-explanatory.
• Love bears up under anything and everything that comes: Wow, that means a lot of good, and a lot of bad…
• …is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without  weakening]:  I guess people would perceive this as naive, believing the best of everyone, keeping hope against all odds, and enduring everything.  It kind of brings up the image,in my head, of a starry-eyed child, we usually turn away from this to avoid disappointment.  However, love never fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end].  The disappointments we may suffer when we love,fade away, but love does not.

Do I practice all of this? Not even half, but I am learning.   If we were to sum up all of the previous points we could say love consists of swallowing our pride, and our ego, and putting others first. Not eliminating our importance, but loving others, as we love ourselves.

Learning to Love: The Journey

I want to learn how to love as unconditionally as my mother-in-law loves her parents.  Her childhood was not the best, and I have seen so many people grow up with bitterness against their parents, even when their own childhood was not half as bad as hers.  Yet, she chooses never to highlight the bad, only speaking good of them.  Never accusing, or blaming them for anything, even though she suffered because of their actions.  This is, to me, the very definition of unconditional love.  I have asked her how she does that, how she is so loyal to them, and her answer is simple: “Because they are my family.”  In her mind, regardless of what they may do wrong, family is part of one’s self, and should be shown love.

I would like to learn how to just love people because of who they are, and stop subconsciously loving them more or less based on how much I consider they deserve it.  Usually, if I see a person who only thinks selfishly, my respect, and love towards them decreases.  It’s like I need to have a reason to love someone, like so-and-so puts others first, so they deserve to be loved.  However, that is most certainly conditional love, depending on their behavior, and attitudes.  I have no problem, treating strangers politely, and treating certain people with love.  However, I really need to work on treating with love, and sincerely loving, those who I (am supposed to) love, but do not like.   For example, those whose personalities do not click with mine , or whose opinions differ greatly from mine, and actions just do not match up with my “standards”.  Looking in, I notice I can be judgemental, when one strives for excellence, they start making the mistake of seeing what others should work on.  In my own quest for excellence, I must cease to do this, and work on myself, and just focus on loving others.

This brings me to explain what this “journey” will be.  I have made the decision to leave much of my life behind to live with my mother who is battling breast cancer.  This trip will be my quest for learning how to love unconditionally. Going somewhere I was not looking forward to going. Leaving my comfort, to be with those who I love but don’t like. I have put up walls, I am used to just watching from a distance what is happening, making it easier to have my walls up, with that convenient little window to look thru.  However, love means tearing down those walls, and opening up my heart to the severity of what will be going on around me.  I have a hard, and sometimes rebellious heart.  God promises to take that heart, and replace it will a heart of flesh, which will truly feel how He means it to.  I am bracing myself, because this seems like it’s going to be a time when I will be tested, and frustrated, and probably desperate.  I know I will become, very dependent on God.  He is the one who shaped my character, He taught my how to let go of my fits of rage, and anger problems back in Summer of 2002.  It looks like 2012 will be a lengthy course on unconditional love.

My Quest for Physical Self-Improvement

I have always been conscious of the value of healthy eating, sleeping, and exercising habits. I know that if I am a person of excellence I must strive for that in every area of my life.  Though I probably eat healthy more times than not, having good sleeping, and exercising habits weren’t my strong point.  This is how I knew that they were exactly the areas I needed to work on if I wanted my body to get back into balance.  However, what made me decide to start exercising was seeing this eye-opening image stating the benefits of exercise.

Benefits of Exercising

What really called my attention was how it helped migraines, and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  I have been very thin my whole life, so I was not looking to lose any weight.  Quite the contrary, I wouldn’t mind putting on some pounds.   At 5’4” the most I have ever weighed has been 109lbs., so there is still room in my BMI to grow.  As it happens, the same fast metabolism that has kept me thin my whole life, has also been responsible for my migraines, PCOS, and my mildly fatty liver.  Without getting in the tedious details of how the endocrine system controls what happens in our bodies, I will try to explain this as briefly as possible.  Ok, maybe not brief, I am rarely brief.

From what research I have done, I learned that a fast metabolism means that you burn your food faster because your body releases more insulin that drives the glucose (from food)  into the cells for energy.  Sounds great at first, right?  I could literally eat everything I wanted, and any amount I wanted, and I wouldn’t gain weight.  Besides that I was always eating, because I was always hungry (low blood sugar caused by so much insulin).  However, that same insulin was the cause for the migraines I would get almost immediately after I would eat refined sugar.  It was also the cause for my menstrual irregularities, which I never gave much importance to until I was married, and off the pill, and wondering where my period was for 6 months (and no, I was not pregnant).  During those 6 months, some test were done showing ovaries with cysts.  Then, there was the gallbladder attack.  The test to see my gallbladder also revealed a mild fatty liver, which may have been a result of all the excess estrogen in my system. (The liver is responsible for eliminating the excess hormones in the body.) At the point of my gallbladder attack I was also jaundice, so my liver was not in the best conditions.  So, this is where my fast metabolism, (and love for carbs) had led me: I was 21 years old, thin as always, but my health was not in the best shape because my hormones, controlled by the thyroid in charge of the metabolism, were out of whack.  So, I began looking for ways to restore my health, natural ways.

First things had to be first, my doctor wanted to remove my gallbladder, I had other ideas.  I googled it (of course), and apparently there was a gallbladder flush.  After gulping down a nasty mixture of extra virgin olive oil, and lemon juice, away went most of the stones!  (I’ve got the ultrasounds to prove it.)  I still had the liver issue, the migraines, and the PCOS.  I began learning what I should eat, and what I shouldn’t.   This helped avoid at least those migraines brought on by my diet.  About the PCOS, I began taking a natural supplement, vitex, which did help.  I went from going 6 months without a cycle to having consistent 35 day cycles, something I had never had before.  I was also taking dandelion root tea for my liver, and I noticed, the pain in my liver went away.

In all this, I didn’t give exercise a chance, I figured the natural supplements were good enough.  What I didn’t realize is that this just served as, exactly that, a supplement to a healthy life style, which needed to include exercise.  The supplements were not meant to be taken forever, there needed to come a point where my body was enough in balance to sustain itself.  When the time came,  I started to look for other alternatives, and I found that image.  I knew my father never wanted to go a day without working out, and when he had to it would literally make him sick.  I thought: “Maybe that is what I am missing, maybe my body needs exercise to keep its own balance”.  I figured it was time.

My husband had been doing P90x for quite a while, and was about to start again.  I suggested I join him the next Monday to start off.  I want to point out, I believe when one does exercise, it should be with a goal in mind.  My goal?  Excercise at least 30 minutes, 5 days a week.  I did not want to lose weight, I did not want to “look better”, I did not want a six-pack.  My only complaint was a distended lower abdomen, caused by PCOS.  I just wanted to exercise to bring my body into balance, and I knew it would take care of everything else.

My distended abdomen due to PCOS, and yes, this is without sticking my belly out

I began P90x without being able to do 1 push-up.  After the first, and most painful week, I noticed I was able to do 1 then 5 push-ups, and still improving.  My heart rate doesn’t go so high as it used to, meaning my heart is working more efficiently.  My migraines are abolished, and if I notice one is about to start-up, I just start doing jumping jacks, getting the blood flowing prevents it from happening.  Most importantly, my hormones are being balanced, I don’t wake up with that pain on my ovaries, my cycles are regulating, going to 28 days (which is how it should be).  I remember reading about how in Eastern medicine, PCOS, and reproductive disorders were caused by stagnant blood.  That may be the truth because I have seen improvement, and it makes sense.

Along with these improvements, exercising has led to other healthy habits.  Due to our schedules, my husband, and I could not find a decent time to work out after work.  We found the best time would be to exercise before work, around 8 am.  Of course, this means we have to be in bed earlier than 12am, way before that, preferably.  Thus, without meaning to, we have been able to improve our sleeping habits as we have wanted to for so long.  Additionally, I’ve read that going to bed early helps your liver, so added bonus there.  Also, if we go to bed early we are no longer going out to eat at fast foods late at night.  Since we workout in the morning, I can use the evening to cook, so that we eat something good, but not too heavy before 8 or 9pm.

We are now starting the second month, and though I only mean to workout 30 minutes per day, I usually end up doing the whole hour or hour, and a half (when it’s Yoga).   It is true, I do not always wake up eager to excercise, but I begin anyways, and the energy follows.  Going to show me that it’s not about how you feel, it’s about showing up, and being committed, and good things will follow.  I notice my abs are starting to show, my distended lower abdomen (result of PCOS) is a lot flatter, and I feel more energetic.  Sometimes I think to myself that the answer has always been staring me in the face.  I am glad, I finally began.  This was not a new year’s resolution.  I never make those.  I make new day’s resolutions, I decide to work on things that need improvement in my life, and everyday I wake up is a new opportunity to do so.

My View of Teaching

I realized that my method of teaching consists of the following: Encourage, and guide the student to grasp their true potential, never control.  I hate when people try to control me, so why would I try to control them?  Also, never under pressure, while some may work well under pressure, in my opinion, few learn well under pressure.  While I am not yet a certified or a licensed teacher, I was practically born with a passion for teaching.

Most likely, it started with the birth of my younger brother when I was 20 months old.  I guess I always felt that I was the one who should help instruct him.   Of course, most the education in my home came from my mother.   My mother was an excellent teacher, she homeschooled all of us during our first years, and she taught me how to read before I was five.  However, I always assumed that I could relate to my brother, and be on his level, mostly because of our age proximity.  I remember when I would always try to instruct him to color inside the lines.  In my home, this was very common with all of the members of the family.  My father would speak to us about complex theories from a very young age, and my sisters were always helping me learn new things.  Learning, in my house was not limited to school or during homeschooling hours, my parents treated learning as something very natural.  Therefore, I always loved putting together the pieces of information I would capture in different places: school, movies, books, etc. I would, then, love sharing what I learned with those around me. Then, throughout most of my life, I have always loved being able to help people realize something, or learn.

I would say I began realizing my love for educating when I was in high school.  My boyfriend’s father, who was a former NYU math professor, was having a difficult time giving math tutoring to his 10-year-old granddaughter.   The reason for not succeeding in this attempt was not the lack of knowledge, but the lack of being able to meet her at a level she would understand or that would spark her interest.  Frustrated, they asked if I would give it a shot.  I did, I sat down with her, and told her to explain what was being taught in the class, and then helped her realize that she already had everything necessary to understand the lessons.  I also focused on the weak areas, mostly the times table, and the results were excellent.  My now father-in-law, always jokes about how everything happened.

I later moved on to be a freelance tutor in the university, mostly for accounting, but I ended up tutoring my classmates in any of the various courses I was taking.  I started working for the university as a Math tutor, however the one hour I had with the students was never enough to be able to help those who were very lost.  The next semester I was hired as an English tutor, which I was hesitant about at first, but  I succeeded with the help of another English tutor who became my mentor and good friend.  I would say that my teaching style started to be set in place while working as a tutor. Even though my major in the university was in accounting, I realized more, and more everyday that I wanted to be a teacher.  Of course, I believe in finishing what I start, so I finished my bachelor’s in accounting, and then took the courses needed to be an accounting teacher (business education teacher).  Mixing the two subjects I loved most.

I love teaching those who are willing to learn, but the challenge is getting them to that point.  While there will always be students who absolutely refuse to learn, most students are willing to learn when something interests them.  I was able to find what sparked the interest of most of them, and used this to teach them.  To get to know them enough to know what interests them, and to go to their level, they needed to feel comfortable being around me.  To accomplish this, I had to be pleasant.  A pleasant personality is usually underestimated.  However, when educating, some students may tune you out completely if they feel you are unpleasant.   Those are the subjective aspects of it, feelings have to do a lot in this process.

Finally, I always think that students learn things that they consider important for everyday life, so I always try, and help them find real life, and daily life applications for their learning. I like showing them that learning is a natural process, in reality they learn everyday without realizing it.

What Being a College Graduate Means (To Me)

I compare graduating from college with being a toddler.  You have been years preparing, but have not been able to practically apply what you have been taught to do.  In the same way, toddlers have the capacity to learn new things, but it is a bit awkward and difficult to actually begin doing day-to-day things.  It’s those fine motor skills that have to be developed.   We go thru that stage again, where we are clumsy, uncoordinated, and somewhat lost.  Where we have to depend on others to teach us, and guide us in the beginning.  We are like this lump of clay that has to be molded. We have the potential, and now we have to actually make that into something tangible. People might think that graduating college means we’ve arrived, but it just means we’ve arrived at the bottom step, and it’s time to start climbing up.

Carried by the Wind: Pieces of My Autobiography

Puerto Rico

       After my family left the states when the war of 1998 was over, we moved to Puerto Rico.  The war, for us, consisted of economic problems, stress, a declining spiritual life and a final desperate attempt to find a better life elsewhere.  My father’s solution was to leave where ever we were whenever things got bad, in hopes that we would find success.  The truth was that if we were to succeed on the outside, we had to have success in our insides.  So there is no wondering why we didn’t succeed until we started believing in success and depending on God.

                We argued constantly with our father, so we wouldn’t leave the states. “What about our friends? What about our language?  Where would we start out?  Isn’t that a 3rd world country?” were some questions that arose during our discussions concerning Puerto Rico.  We had been told of our departure only 6 weeks before leaving.  Although suspicion should have been obvious, since each one of my father’s scouting trips to Puerto Rico had been getting more and more serious. While I had been convinced that it was a phase that he would eventually get over, I didn’t realize that our trip would be so soon.  The final decision to leave was made when our rent was raised.  With hardly any warning we were expected to pack and empty the house.  We ended up leave many pieces of furniture among other valuables back in Florida.

                So, we arrived in San Juan on December 31, 1998, with luggage and over 20 cardboard boxes, filled with a little bit of everything including our year old computer.  My father attempted to reach some connections he had made on a small municipal island off the coast of Puerto Rico, called Culebra.  In my father’s earlier trips he had made friends with some fellow Christians there and they had agreed to keep us for a time in one of their houses.  Apparently, the hurricane that had hit just a few months before had destroyed the house that was meant for us.  We stayed on the island a day or so, and then, early in the morning, loaded our baggage on to the ferry back to the main island of Puerto Rico.   We spent 3 days in Fajardo, the city where the ferry landed, in a guest house thriving on sandwiches and juice, waiting for the car we had shipped, until we finally set out for Camuy, a city located approximately 70-80 km to the west of San Juan.

                Camuy, of all places, was our destination due to my father’s dream of being able to collaborate with Yiye Avila’s Ministry, which was located there.  His hopes had been to be financially helped by the ministry, while helping it out spiritually.  We soon found out that we had misunderstood and could volunteer if we wanted to, but the finances at the ministry were low.   So we set off to find ourselves a house and start getting settled. We arrived in Camuy on the 5 of January, on Epiphany Eve; we first went to the Ministry.  There we found Gladys, a friend of my father’s, she lead us to town to help us search for a house.  The town square was crowded with people and I specifically remember a giant Christmas tree in the center that covered the fountain. A little beyond the square, was a supermarket, and there, next to the market was a vacant second floor apartment for rent.  We left our baggage in our car and all seven of us went upstairs.  Inside was the owner, sitting at a dominoes table with a neighbor.  He was willing enough to let us rent the house and the agreement was $375 a month.  We moved in that same night, and slept on various blankets on the floor.  That was the night that we began to occupy the large 4 room apartment, which was not very elaborate, but was to be our dwelling for almost a decade.

                Before we actually started to go anywhere, our first months were spent indoors.  Our house was large and we hardly had any furniture.  Actually, in those first weeks, our only source of water was that which came from the bathtub, and our only source of light was a string of light bulbs that crossed the living room.  My father had to return to the states every 2 weeks to keep up with the lawn mowing business contracts.  The neighborhood children were curious and friendly, often, we would invite them over, and they were open and did the same with us.  One of the boys I specifically remember, was  “Macho”, was our next door neighbor, I had a huge crush on him for about two years.  Another friend we met in those first months was Marisa, she lived close by with her grandma and aunt, she spoke English and her parents lived in the states.  She also had a younger brother, so my brother and I would visit them often.

                  Those first years in Puerto Rico were full of adventure and discovery, being foreigners in a small town made us stick out like sore thumbs.  Eventually, we started to make true, sincere friends, who soon became more like our family.  We started attending the Pentecostal church close to our house, and visited countless others.  There were many youth in our church, but we didn’t want to join them, until our friends, Benet and Deb, started to integrate us into that group, by being invited to their outings.  Precious teenagers soon befriended us and we felt at home.

My parents, especially my mother, had a deep purpose to help the needy.  Just as they had done in Argentina, they were dedicated to help those who were lost in addictions, homeless or desperately helpless; Camuy was no exception.  Soon our house was visited by all sorts of people who found comfort in my mother’s kindness and my father’s guidance.  Throughout their entire time in Puerto Rico, they did the best they could to help these people.  Even though some people did not really have the desire to change, there were others whose life changed dramatically.  I specifically remember two people who were always at the bottom of our stairs asking everyone who passed by for coins, they were deep in drug addiction.  There was a young man, Luisito, whose body was so battered and thin because of the addiction that he looked decades older.  With him was a woman, Genesis, who was clearly older than him.  The aspect of Genesis that stands out clearly in my memory is how extremely skinny she was.  Like Luisito, Genesis’ drug addiction had taken a horrible toll on her body.  In my young mind, I thought that either of them was weeks away from death.  However, my mother would not give up on them; she would tirelessly bring them food, and try to help get them to rehabilitation centers.  Even when they would get into rehab, they would finish and go back to old ways.  Later, we found out that they had both gone to prison, and didn’t hear much about them after that.  Finally, a few years later, I saw a young man I hardly recognized, it was Luisito who had found Christ while still in jail. The thin frail Luisito was gone; the new Luisito was healthy and dedicated to spreading the word of God, which had so greatly impacted his own life.  Later on we also found out that Genesis story was similar to Luisito’s, they were now both healthy, addiction free and serving God.

                School was another saga; the principal had refused to register my brother and I in her elementary school, Laurentino Estrella.   We had arrived in Puerto Rico in January; it would be another 7 months before the school year started again.  This was my mother’s golden opportunity to fulfill her dream of homeschooling us.  My older sisters had already started middle school, so my brother and I were homeschooled for that semester. My mother was an excellent teacher, having homeschooled us previously the only obstacle was we needed books for homeschooling which were expensive.

At this point in time we were not doing very well financially because our income basically depended upon our father’s failing lawn mowing business he had left back in Miami.  My father had left his business in the hands of some friends, but he would travel every month to Miami to try to keep up with the business.  By the time he paid the workers, airplane tickets and lodging for the two weeks, he barely got together enough money to support all six of us.  Since things were so gloom financially, spending hundreds of dollars on homeschooling materials was out of the question.  We had to make do with what we had and what we had was almost nothing. This was a few years before the internet was so prominent in Puerto Rico, so my mother tried as best she could to get a hold of the materials that were needed even with our meager funds.  She had found out about a missionary family that also lived in Puerto Rico and who were homeschooling, she perceived this as an opportunity to get the materials we so desperately needed.  That was a trip to remember.

<p

On the Journey of Continuous Self-Improvement

So in most of the articles I read, and Linkedin profiles I see, I see that people who work in the finance world should possess knowledge of SQL.  Seeing as how my business administration education was slightly old school, we seldom had to use Peachtree, or any other program, it looks like my next step in my journey to improve ME would be to start learning SQL.

• Update: I started a tutorial on Konagora, I am learning and practicing.  I am understanding the concept of it, now just have to practice more.
• On SQL it asked me to do some excercises, and I was lost for a moment, then I started putting the pieces together and was able to query that brought up exactly what I needed.  Then, I tried with other examples to make sure I had it right.  It was a moment of joy, I love getting the hang of things.

I realized that besides SQL, it would be a good idea to get more familiarized with Peachtree, and start learning more about ERP systems.

• About Peachtree, I did work briefly with it in High School, but I didn’t remember much.
• I was watching the tutorial, and it seemed like something I could catch-up on very well. I am going to buy the program and install it to get more of a feel of how it works.
• May 4-I ordered Peachtree 2010, and I started experimenting with a retail company, but I got frustrated, because for the life of me, I could not find “stock items”.  Later, I found out that apparently only the pro-version has it.
• I know how I learn, I have to get an introduction, then it has to be hands-on, then I have to see examples, to compare what I do with the examples.  Therefore, I started experimenting, then moved on to read the manual, so I could be familiar with what it was talking about.
• I am using my information I recorded for my Mary Kay business to practice Peachtree.  I am currently entering in all the items from inventory, starting last year.