Month: May 2016

The Car Ride

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The Car Ride
By Bernadette A Moyer

car ride

The car ride our last best place to be alone
Together we share space to explore and to roam
No lines no wait and no airport fuss
Just gas and go and there is no rush

We ride, we stop, and we eat here or there
We sing, we talk, we sit and we stare
In silence we think then engaged we share
Together we go here together we go there

We get up and we drive just about every where
The car ride our last best place to be alone
The car ride anonymously we move from here to there
Miles marked miles and miles driven sights to see nothing is hidden

So often it is just you and me
Alone and together out there we can explore and roam
Then we turn back around and head for our home
The car ride our last best place to be alone

What We Leave Behind

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What We Leave Behind
By Bernadette A Moyer

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There is nothing that I have ever had and lost or grieved over that I would welcome back in my life. Isn’t that funny? We cry so hard. We want another outcome. But once we have the time to process it becomes so clear that what we thought we wanted and what we thought we needed was never intended to stay in our lives. It could be a relationship it could be a job, it could be almost anything that was once so valued and later becomes just what we leave behind.

Many years ago I was involved with a guy and I will never forget his own father saying to me, “What is a girl like you who is so on the ball doing with a guy like him?” At the time I couldn’t see it but it turns out that he was right. That guy was never really intended for me.

Recently I was talking with a really good friend. He shared with me the first relationship that ever broke his heart. He talks about how much he wanted it to work out. Not that long ago he looked her up she had more than 50 court cases where she was the defendant. She is a drug addict and eventually pled guilty to prostitution. Now all he can think is thank God that didn’t work out. Or maybe it did work out exactly as it was meant to be, she was never intended to be a lifelong friend and partner. Her time in his story was short and it was over. It was what he left behind.

Today I look back on so many things that changed and things that I once grieved over and not one of them would I want back in my life. The following is one of my favorite quotes;

“There are people who can walk away from you … let them walk. I don’t want you to try to talk another person into staying with you, loving you, calling you, caring about you, coming to see you, staying attached to you. Your destiny is never tied to anyone that left. And it doesn’t mean that they are a bad person, it just means that their part in your story is over. And you have to know when people’s part in your story is over.” T.D. Jakes

It is so freeing to just accept that we will leave people, we will leave places and we will leave positions behind. Nothing is meant to last forever. We learn from all that we leave behind. If something or someone was meant to be in our lives, they would be in our lives, period.

There is so much to love and so much to do and experience in our lifetime. When one door closes, truly another one opens.

“None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an afterthought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.” Richard Gere

Here is to living the good life and to appreciating all that we have all that is yet to be and knowing that it is perfectly okay to leave somethings and some people behind …

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
All books by Bernadette A Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Three Stories of Three Unattractive People

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Three Stories of Three Unattractive People
By Bernadette A. Moyer

behavior

The ugly side of humanity that I witnessed this past week, it has stayed with me so like any good writer I must write it out to share them and to purge these stories. Here they are …

The first story …

My husband and I were headed out to Walmart to pick up some pool chemicals. We parked by the garden shop and were just a short distance from the entrance when we heard what appeared to be an argument. It seemed like two men were fighting. My husband started ushering me to his left side and then I heard the sounds of crashing merchandise to the ground and security detaining two guys. They wrestled the shirt off one guy and there on the ground went about 10 to 12 video games that he had stuffed into his pants. ”Get off me man, get off me man” he screamed.

Security escorted him into an office and we watched a cashier ring up all the game totals to get the price of the robbed goods. Later the police arrived. By the time we left there were five police cars there. Another lady who showed up after the fact and after seeing all the cop cars said, “This isn’t Dunkin Donuts!” Normally I ignore people like her but I felt compelled to answer, “No this was a robbery.”

I have a vision of that guy who stole video games from Walmart and all I could think was “Was it worth it?” Now you are a criminal” And for what?

The second story …

Last weekend was spent in Williamsburg Virginia and for the most part the people were so nice. Small chatty conversations, holding doors open and just southern charm was our experience. After a nice breakfast on a Saturday with temperatures that rose to over 80 degrees we headed out on Colonial Parkway driving from Williamsburg to Yorktown. We had the convertible car and were driving top down really appreciating the nice weather after days and weeks of rainstorms.

When we arrived in Yorktown they were having a street festival and had blocked off parts of the road. The covered parking area was closed off from the access that we drove in on and normally we would make a left turn but it was closed. We drove a short distance and happened upon another parking lot. It appeared almost full when we noticed a car getting ready to leave and we were next in line and pulled directly forward. I was driving.

As I was getting ready to put the top an orange Mustang came in reverse from about three cars up. When I first saw him I thought he was waiting for a car up ahead. As he reversed to get closer to our car he screamed “asshole” at me? I was stunned!

When you drive past a parking spot, in my view you gave up your rights to it? Clearly after his barrage of words he had an issue. His ilk stayed with me, I thought, you have a woman and a small child in the car with you and you talk like that? Not very attractive behaviors and all this over a parking spot?

The third story …

This one hits us little closer to home and it makes my mother’s blood boil. It started out to be a beautiful and a happy day. It was sunny and cool and a pleasant May Monday. Our son has many achievements but getting his driver’s license has eluded him. He tried and he tried and he just was not successful until yesterday. It was one aspect of the driving he couldn’t seem to get and in his defense the Jeep he has been driving it one of the largest vehicles I personally have ever driven. But he got it! Finally he had success.

A few hours later he interviewed for a new job and was immediately hired. More success and God knows he needed it. He is a really good person with a big heart, an artist with an artist’s sensibilities. He has had his share of struggles.

About a week ago he started dating a girl that he liked. Last night after the gym they went to see a movie together. Here is where the ugly comes in; sometime during the movie she excuses herself. When she doesn’t return he goes for his phone that was placed in the cup holder. It is missing. He goes to the front desk to report that he lost it.

It is not in his nature to think negatively of anyone let alone this girl. Again he liked her. What he doesn’t know is that she has been using his phone and texting from it to both me his mother and his father. Her text messages that appear to be coming from him since they are from his phone are not only disrespectful but antagonistic. They are weird not like him and later become sexual in nature. I am stunned and his father is furious. How could he speak to us like this? How could he treat us like this?

Well he was just as stunned when he returned home and read them himself. I don’t think he likes this girl now and I know he feels sad and badly that he trusted her.

Just another story of the unattractive people that live side-by-side in our society, normally I choose to ignore them but today I had to write it out and to share them. So what do you do when you witness firsthand the ugly behaviors of people in society?

We see a robbery we see rudeness and we witness dishonesty and deceitfulness in people, it can tear our heart apart or we can look and we can learn. We learn what we don’t want in our life we learn to appreciate all that is good in life.

Sadly there will always be ugliness in people, the unattractive ones, we can allow it to affect us or we can move closer to the good people, the ones who are naturally attractive because of their goodness. I am thankful that I know better, I know the difference between what is right and wrong, I know what good looks like just like I know what is most unattractive.

“Don’t let the behaviors of others destroy your inner peace.” Dalai Lama

Hang on to the good people in your life … there is some real ugly in this world … the darker side of humanity all I can think is that is it really worth it?

Stealing video games, cursing at people you don’t know in front of your own family and stealing a phone from a guy while on a date? And how do you live with yourself when you make such poor choices? How do you look into the mirror?

God Bless us all …

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
Books by Bernadette A Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Adjust and Adapt

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Adjust and Adapt
By Bernadette A. Moyer

 

adjust

We must learn to adjust and to adapt as life is ever changing. To stay stuck in yesterday’s news is like living from behind. Most people hate change. It is like it throws their equilibrium out of tune. I have always embraced change. I love new things and I love to learn. We are all evolving.

History is great but that is exactly what it is, history, the past. Every aspect in our lives depends on how we adjust and adapt to change. Life changes when we leave home, when we get married, take on a new career job, purchase a home and have children. It changes when we embrace new relationships and when we let go of old ones.

We adjust to that new baby or new work place environment. We have to figure it out and to learn again. Many people will suffer a sort of “norms crisis” with their new environment. That new baby cries and disrupts our previous peaceful past. We work with new people that we instantly gel with and others that we may barely tolerate. But we learn from all of them.

I’ve always been the “change charger” in our family and my husband the “slow and steady one.” Together we make a great couple as a result. A guy that has worked for the same organization for 34 years and lived in the same house for 24 years is not a guy who easily embraces change.

When our kids started leaving home, I had the hardest time. The number one job that meant the most to me was in being a mother. I soon learned to take my career and my writing more seriously. These things are what makes me, me. Being a mother was only a part of me not my total being.

Adjusting and adapting to letting my kids go wasn’t easy but now that I have I love my freedom. Less responsibility after decades of being responsible for so many others feels great. Life is easier with less people to please.

I never thought I would be so happy with less people in our home and I am. I think you get to an age where all you really crave is peace. It is so easy to fill our lives up with everyone else’s drama and issues but often at what cost? Perhaps the cost is in denying ourselves and our own needs and wants.

My husband is newly retired and I don’t think I have seen him smile so much! At the end of his career he had reached the highest level that he had wanted for himself, as a General Superintendent. At that level the demands were great and time was a commodity that he often didn’t have. You could physically see what that job was taking out of him. Meetings and meeting and always on24 hour call back for the past 6-years, every waking moment checking his communication devices. He was needed and worked hard to fill the needs.

But the truth is that if we drop dead today, life goes on, not one of us is irreplaceable. So he gave it is all then one day he declared, “I am done, I am not going back. It hasn’t been fun for a long time.” Today we have raised our kids and worked our careers. With two pensions between us, no mortgage and adult children we are free from decades of responsibilities and it feels so new and so good too.

Together we are adjusting to living with less by choice and in spending our time together and doing the things that we love to do. What a blessing! Who knew that during all those grinding it out years that this day would arrive and we would still be young enough to enjoy it.

What is next in retirement? Sleep, sun and some fun! It is time for travel and some classes at our local college, things like Chinese cooking, meditation and ball room dance. All those year we grabbed at responsibility and embraced it and yet today for the first time we are both being very selective about what and who we want to be responsible for, having kids, a home, a career is all about being responsible. We have been there and done that.

We are embracing our future and looking forward to making all the necessary adjustments and adapting to the newness of what comes next.

Adjusting and adapting, that is both the beauty and the secret of life. Adjust and adapt … it makes everything and all of life’s many changes just so much easier.

Updated May of 2016
Once again more adjusting and adapting as my husband has accepted a new position with local government. So it is bye bye early retirement and hello to new challenges … here we go again as life is good and all about learning and growing and doing …

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
All books by Bernadette A Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Five Fingers Five Toes

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Five Fingers Five Toes
By Bernadette A. Moyer

child

Parents want their children to be healthy and happy. The first thing a parent does is count the fingers and the toes of their children. They want to know that they are healthy and that they were born as perfect as possible. But the truth is every single child born is as perfect as possible. They are all gifts from God.

I don’t know of any parent that doesn’t want a healthy and happy child and to see that child grow to become a healthy and happy adult. Yet not every single person will be healthy or happy hard as we try and as much as we hope and pray.

My husband and I have raised three children and one child is a gifted and talented artist. He has also taught us how to raise an upside down child in a right side up world. He is different. He struggles socially and he struggles with the “norms” placed on many young adults. We could continue to fight him and push him or we could let go in love and accept him as he is … I just finished reading Love That Boy.

Love That Boy was written by Ron Fournier and is about a father that had to learn about love and parental expectations. Parents often have a vision of how a child should act and how they should behave and how they should look. Many parents put their expectations upon that child and sometimes that child is unwilling or unable to meet those expectations. The child in Love That Boy is a child on the autism spectrum. His father was often concerned about his son embarrassing himself or his dad.

Let’s face it every single well baby visit measures by “norms” on size and weight and developmental skills. There are charts on where a child should be to be considered “normal” we do measure our babies and our children.

Our kids go to school and they learn math and English and all kinds of text book learning but they also learn social skills and they too measure on what is “normal” and what is “different” or problematic. The parent’s job is to give their children what they need and not necessarily what they want. Sometimes knowing what a child needs is difficult to discern. We never really know what goes on in another person’s mind.

The single greatest challenge is to love that child regardless what they say and what they do, we learn to separate the words and the actions from the person. Real love transcends it all. There are always gifts and talents if we are willing to look for them and to appreciate them. Each child born is a gift from God.

Our son acknowledges his difficulty with social skills and yet I personally don’t notice them, we have an easy and loving relationship. I’ve had to learn to stop measuring my children, they are who they are and they are what they are and very little or any of it has to do with me. They are their own unique and individual person.

Where five fingers and five toes are important, what is most important is what is in someone’s heart. Our son has a huge heart and a conscience and always tries to right his wrongs and learn from his mistakes. What else could any parent hope for?

Today is Mother’s Day and this mother is both proud and pleased, we celebrated our relationship yesterday with breakfast out and a movie, we had fun and he planned it all! So although he struggles with several developmental markers, in my book he is still learning and growing and trying and therefore doing just fine …

We may not get the child we think that we want but we definitely get the child that God alone intended for us. And that is good and good enough …

Happy Mother’s Day! Celebrate what you have and what you had and what you learned well beyond five fingers and five toes!

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
All books by Bernadette A Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble