Teach me how to love

Just when I think I know how to love I learn another lesson. My life so far has been a series of lessons on how to recognize, receive and give love. I want to believe I am an expert on how to love but even after 51 years of attempts and many hours of practice on multiple people and a myriad of teachings devoted to this very topic I sometimes still feel like a novice.

Love seemed like such an easy word and concept to grasp. Children do it so easily, yet as the lessons and traumas of life set in somehow we unlearn this magical mystical thing that should be as easy as breathing.

This week I learned that my go to is selfishness. I think of me first. My ego, my reputation, my wants, my needs, my desires, my motivations, mine. These are the first thing I think of instinctively. My second thought is what does God think and my third is to take a moment to think of the person, place , situation, dilemma and how they will be affected.
True sacrifice is a lifelong pursuit that was shown to me this week.

I was challenged to love someone that I say I love all the time, yet to sacrifice for them took a minute.

It wasn’t anything life shattering or complicated just a battle of my inner self trying to be kind, thinking of someone else other than me, letting go of material possessions in an act of unselfish love.

This should have been instinctive and easy yet there was a battle none the less. I surrendered in the end and when my heart, mind and soul had settled in, then the joy came. But in the process I thought about how I have only ever wanted to be a vessel of the greatest love ever and yet the concept of this love has not yet fully grasped me and taken over yet.

My ego is still winning and “ all flesh must die” is the message I am now embracing.
I began to formulate my ideas and beliefs about love through my childhood family and it was very traumatic. I then went to learn love in a marriage and after 30 plus years, I am still learning.

God gave me 5 amazing spirit beings and they have been some of the best teachers of love for me.

As a world traveller and a missionary I have displayed acts of love to complete strangers.
Family, friends, co workers, strangers and authority figures have all taught me about this intricate word that we apply to so many things that God says He is( love).
When I sit in the love that God is then I realize that I don’t know what love is and I need to allow Him to teach me again.

I once started underlying the word love or heart in the bible as I read it to see how many times it was in the lessons I was gleaning and it showed up quite a lot. Not to mention all the other lessons that originate or lead to love.

They say that we are all in the pursuit of happiness- I wonder what our world would look like if we all began to desire the pursuit of real love?

Charmaine 

Not Here Anymore

My heart aches, when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

A tear falls down, with the blinking of my eyes

I wipe it away, but I still hear my heart cry

My head knows that you’re not here, you’ve gone far away

Yet my heart remembers, like it was yesterday

I can’t take this pain much more

I want our life back, back like it was before

My heart aches, when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is here aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

Time should have stood still and waited for me to catch my breath

Cause I wasn’t ready to release you to go just yet

Cause you weren’t just here, you were a real part of me

Intertwined within my life in ways I couldn’t see

I know that this is life, I embrace that it’s real

But grasping the truth, doesn’t change how I feel

My heart aches when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is here aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

Every morning I wake up knowing “life goes on”

But would somebody please tell me, when will this pain be gone?

I know you`re in a better place,  where you always wanted to be

Yet the thought of being apart from you, is just not consoling me

 I whisper softly … “I want to let you go”,

But my heart screams loudly- NO!

My heart aches when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is here aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

For Tony- Charmaine Hinds  November 10, 2009

If You Like Pinacoladas…

One of my biggest lessons in life has been attached to something I have continually shared with people I have worked with for years.
“You can not make Pinacolodas when all you have been given is lemons and water. Your best bet is to just add your own kind of sugar and make the best damn lemonade you possible can!”.

When they begin to tell me about all the expectations that have been placed upon them , whether they are fictional from within their minds or real, placed there by people who have no concept of how, when, where and what it takes to accomplish the task being done, I share emphatically to them to say the following;
“When you get me a coconut and a pineapple, then and only then can I attempt to maybe think about creating a Pinacoloda. but not without a little bit of my special rum”.

I believe my black history teacher in my public school is the one that started teaching me this when he taught me about my circumstances in this world as a young black woman emigrated here from the island of Jamaica. For me the difference was that I also was the first generation in every arena in my family.
People have always asked me to do things and I have wanted to do my best with excellence and go up and above. But unfortunately. I haven’t always had the practical or tangible resources to complete the task at hand.

If you look on the outward it seems like the playing field is even and the odds are not stacked against me, but in truth there are invisible factors that have continually hindered my progress all of these years. Now don’t get me wrong, I have risen above my circumstances in amazing ways. I swim like my life depends on it, but make no mistake, these are lemonade circumstances and the struggle has been real!

I did not have a generational lineage of wealth, power and prestige that gives me the advantage afforded to so many other people. In our family we didn’t have fancy homes, money for extra curricular activities, well tutored, cultivated education, connections in business and society, a cottage or annual vacation to exotic places, to give us a level up for our next generation.

No, I come from a line of slaves and blue-collar workers, (why do they call them that again?) that had to work twice as hard just to scrape by and make a living. I was never given an example of a married couple making it to their 30th wedding anniversary to pattern my own marriage off of, but I did it. I was a first generation everything, high school graduate, all my children from one marriage, an entrepreneur, an ACE ( adverse Childhood Experiences) overcomer, and all of this came with Pinacolada expectations.

When they ask me how I have gotten the necessary ingredients to make something that slightly resembles a Pinacolda, I let them know about my secret ingredient that makes everything taste good. Faith.

“Now Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see”

If I have had an unfair advantage at all, this was it. I have had Faith.

I started out making the best lemonade on the corner, and with some time and experience and with unshakeable Faith I have been blessed with a coconut, a pineapple, and the best rum made from the sugarcane of Jamaica. That’s why “I love me some Pinacoldas”.

So to all you “Lemonaders” out there- let me give you a little hope... just add FAITH and see what happens.