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Tuesday, February 01, 2011

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?



How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and bring it down?

The answer is.....YOU DON'T!!!!

Before I begin this blogpost, I want to make sure that we are not confused between the name of my best friend Marisa and my new student, Maria. Both names begin with "M" and although they are very different people, the one thing they both have is D.E.T.E.R.M.I.N.A.T.I.O.N. I met Maria on my very first day in my new cell group when I started attending the other branch of church in November. How she found out that I teach english is a very interesting story. What happened is that the group leader was asking everyone in the group if they are going to a certain church event. I replied "No" because I teach english on that day.

After the cell group, she started asking me questions about my costs for a lesson and said she might be interested. "Fine, just let me know what you want." I replied and silently recorded that conversation and put it at the back of my mind. I have alot of people that say to me "I want to learn english" but they never follow up. It wasn't that I didn't believe her, I just wanted to observe.

I saw her off and on during the cell group and a couple of weeks later, she comes back to me and says that she is interested. I gave her the same reply and told her to let me know when she was ready. Then in January, she says to me that she wants to start at the beginning of February. To tell you the truth, I was pretty impressed....and for a good reason. You see, she has a 2 or 3 year old son. He is the cutest little thing and is also quite a ball of energy! But I think she is the one with alot of balls to want to go ahead and take on english despite having a 2 or 3 year old and not using him as an excuse not to learn.

Her passion and determination moves me like the way the ground moves during an earthquake. She has an excuse more than any other person to not go after her person. If she told someone "I would love to learn english BUT...." and explains that she has a little boy, it would sound reasonable and people would understand. But that's not the route she's taking and after going through a failed program with the school where people had the time and space to learn but don't want to, it is refreshing to see someone actively decide that time is not something that she has, it is something that she MAKES. She asked me "Are you available at 9 am in the morning?" For someone with that kind of passion and determination, I would be available at 5am in the morning!

It seems like the law of attraction is working again and I am drawing people into my world who are driven and determined like myself. People who don't wait for the right conditions to happen, but rather they create those conditions. I want to go back to my relationship with Marisa for a moment, my best friend whom I will be seeing in Montevideo.

When our relationship first began, we did not have time or space together and it didn't get any better when I went back to Canada. But she wanted it to work so badly and so did I. Even if all we could do is text each other once a week, we would do that. if you've read my "Cross-Cultural Caring" series, you know that even though we did not have much time together, the little time we did have we put to good use. Our relationship grew and became even better than some of my relationships where I've had the luxury of time and space. And now we are going to be rewarded with time and space together when I visit Montevideo.

Marisa wanted a relationship with me badly enough to want to make it work and Maria wants to learn english badly enough to want to make time for it to happen. In our North American society, I think we get this idea that conditions need to be right first. NO! We create the conditions and if we want something enough, that higher power out there will line things up for success to happen. It is easy to look at a girl like Maria and think "She has no time to learn english." But success isn't about what she does or doesn't have, it is about what's inside her head....and in her head she has time because she is making the time.

What's inside your head?


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