Month: March 2018

The Lives We Touch

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The Lives We Touch
By Bernadette A. Moyer

lives

My Uncle Lou recently passed on, he was a doctor. He was a huge personality and he loved what he did and was good at it. There is no way to tell just how many lives he touched, how many people he made a difference to and just how many people will remember him now that he is gone.

His obituary states that he was a medical doctor for 61 years. What I remember is a man that truly was larger than life. He was a tremendous support to my mother, his sister. He was always giving; he always had something to offer and to give.

As a little girl I remember the many times he came to visit my grandmother, his mother and times we visited him and his family. These memories are from long ago, yet it is impossible not to think of them with his recent passing.

The only way we do justice to life is by living it to its fullest. He was 88 years old. If I live that long, I will have 30 more years ahead of me, there is nothing like a death to drive home for us just how numbered our days here are, there will be an ending one day.

But how many lives will we touch? Who will remember us upon our passing?

Many years ago a significant death in my life taught me “life is for the living, live it.” And today I would add, “Touch as many lives as you can, and be touched by as many lives too, because that is all that truly matters the most in life!”

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadtteamoyer

Books by Bernadette A. Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Memory Lane

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Memory Lane
By Bernadette A. Moyer

memorylane

We all have them, our memories; we have memories of our childhood, our teenage years, our young adult years and more. We can think about them and sometimes we can visit the people and the places from another time.

Going home will always be Allentown, Pennsylvania for me. It is where I spent a large portion of my childhood and my teenage years as well as my young adult years. As a kid, I walked to school and to church, to many friends’ homes, to the library, the YMCA, to my guitar lessons downtown. I learned to drive there went to first concerts there and even married and had my only birthed child there.

The memories are powerful and numerous. My friend of over 40 years from our days as camp counselors still lives there. My father lived and died there. Again, the memories are many and they run the entire spectrum of happiness, joy, pain and losses. They run the entire spectrum of life.

When I go home to visit, I visit many significant landmarks, the place where I married, the church where my daughter was baptized, my first apartment, my favorite market, and favorite eateries and more.

It is always a fun trip down “memory lane” and yet there is also something so profound about where we started in life and where we end up. There is that distance between our beginnings and where we are today. And of course all the people, the places and the experiences we had along the way. Some remain and many do not stay.

I remember fun times of laughter with my sisters. Fun times with childhood friends. I remember my Confirmation in our neighborhood church. I remember the hospital where I was a volunteer candy striper and several years later, that same hospital where my daughter would come into this world. I remember so many things.

My parents were together there, and then they were not as a divorce would end their union. Just like life when people are so profound and significant in our lives and then they just are not at all present in our lives. We learn to adjust and to adapt; we learn to take our memories with us as we move away and as we move along.

I look back and I see so clearly the riches of the many experiences I have had, truly it has been like a buffet of choices of options of likes and dislikes. Overall, though, I know that it has all contributed to who I became and who I am today. I love my life, I love myself, and I love my journey, warts and all. It truly has been rich and long and wide. I am happy and I am grateful.

A trip down memory lane is always well worth the trip … I highly recommend the trip!

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

Along The Way and Another Way Books by Bernadette A. Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Check Yourself

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Check Yourself
By Bernadette A. Moyer

Man walking down road at sunset

Check yourself? What are you putting forth into the universe? Is it love, is it hatred? Thoughts become actions, what are you thinking about? Are they positive thoughts that are rooted in love or negative thoughts rooted in hate?

Earlier today I watched a documentary about kids with guns and kids age six and up that not only used a gun to commit murder but the days, weeks, months of thinking about it that lead up to the killing.

Then later I read a social media post that encouraged “open mindedness” and most posters were of the same mind set and then came an opposing view. This person was bullied, ganged up on and eventually left the group. They said “open minded” but what I witnessed was anything but that.

Today you can turn on any so called “news stations” I call them “editorial stations” and hear complete one sidedness regardless of any other view point.

Then I think about the mind of a child who doesn’t have the maturity and life experience to process all this and how they act out. Acting out often of anger and frustration because they can’t process what even a skilled adult would find difficult to process.

What can we do? We can check ourselves! What are we putting out into the universe with our own thoughts and actions? What verbal and nonverbal communications are we putting forth? You want more love in your life, be more loving, do you want more hurt and hatred? It all comes back to us.

nice

Our world will get better when we are better. If we continue to fight, to disagree, to hurt others, to spew hatred all we have done is to grow more hate. Remember when we learned that if you couldn’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all?

In the climate we are living through today, I don’t think it is a bad idea to check ourselves? What are we putting out into the universe? Would we want that same thing to be put back upon us? I am not saying it will be easy, it is hard to love a hater, hard to love a difficult person, hard to love someone that we don’t like or agree with … it may be hard, but it isn’t impossible.

There is something good in everyone … we are all works in progress … try and focus on the good and what you can support and can love … check yourself … when you can respond to even the most difficult people and things in your life with love then you too will be rewarded with love.

A six year old boy wasn’t born to be a hater and a killer, I can’t imagine what formed him to become like that, but I do know that when we choose love, choose to respond with love, we are more likely to be met with love.

Check yourself and check your heart …

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