What is meant for you, will find you! I am a firm believer in this statement. If it is meant to happen, if someone is meant to be in your life, it will happen.
Several years ago, I was working on a project with another professional colleague. We shared some personal stories. I was talking to her about a relationship that ended and left me quite sad and gutted. Her response was, “It wasn’t meant to be.” At the time that was not what I wanted to hear. Since then, I have often reflected on it. It wasn’t meant to be.
We all get older and hopefully wiser. My younger self wanted a different outcome. Today my mature self believes what is meant for you, will find you. If it doesn’t it wasn’t meant to be. Peace and happiness come from acceptance and understanding.
All that I have is meant for me, all that I don’t wasn’t meant to be. I know it sounds so simple, but I think that it’s meant to be that simplistic.
Think about all things that just came naturally and at the time when you were open and ready to receive it. What is meant for you quotes emphasize that destined opportunities, relationships, and successes will naturally align with your life, and this encourages patience, trust, and letting go of forced outcomes.
You can’t open any news source without learning that celebrity couple Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman have split after 19 years of marriage. Like most people I am a bit shocked and saddened as it appeared they were a happy and loving couple.
This celebrity news has caused more than a few “couple conversations” with my husband. We have been together for 34 years now and married for 28 years. It is not always easy, but we are committed and stay in love. I hate the term “work at it” as I would rather say we try to keep it fun and happy. We enjoyed each other’s company and like many of the same things. We grew up during the same time period.
They say Keith moved out from the family months ago and are just now making it public knowledge. My husband’s immediate response was “somebody didn’t want it” in regard to their marriage. It made me think that yeah, the only “secret” to a happy marriage is that both people have to want it.
When a man moves out of the family home and purchases his own private residence you can almost guarantee it is because he has found a new partner. I am willing to bet that Nicole has been replaced with a younger version. We have witnessed this show before …
I am a firm believer that when it is over, it is over, both people have to want it for a marriage to succeed. I can’t imagine what is more difficult to leave or to stay in a relationship that you don’t want to be in and are unhappy.
What I think is that he is gone and in my life experience Nicole will find someone or someone better!
When I was a kid, I was friends with all the kids. Friends with the jocks, the artists, the pot heads, the brainiacs, the religious, the non-believers, all of them. I still have that same belief that each person, each type of person has something special to offer. And I was interested in knowing them.
Although I am personally a Christian and Conservative, I never force my beliefs on others. I do my best to live by the “golden rule” treat others as you wish to be treated. It’s not my place to change anyone else but rather to continue to work on and improve myself. If I live a live that is worthy of friends and followers, so be and if not, that is fine too,
What I find increasingly difficult to understand is our current culture or “group think” and the desire to hate and even hurt those that think differently. I find our current political discourse to be soul crushing. I see people that I love and adore spew political hatred at their so called “opposition” and it saddens me. Not because of the target of their wrath and hatred because of how small it makes them look. Often, I shake my head. How could someone so smart and so accomplished spew hatred toward another group of people just because they think/believe in a different way?
We used to believe that shared ideas from opposing viewpoints meted out the best outcomes, today we aren’t even able to have those conversations. I worry for anyone who lives with any hatred in their hearts. I believe it is like a cancer that will harm them from the inside out. Peace and love and acceptance are so much healthier.
My parents taught me that “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” what if someone said something you didn’t like, you just walked away, turned them off, didn’t listen?
Today it’s apparent that there are people who believe that if you don’t think and believe as they do, you deserve to be murdered. How can this even be possible? How on earth did we get here? And more importantly, where do we go from here?
Written on the day after Charlie Kirk was murdered …
My husband tells me that I am “aging backwards” I’ll take it! And he would know as we have been together for 34 years now, together since we were just 32 years old. Although this is not the first time I’ve heard this, it is the first time I actually believe it.
I believe that I had aged pre-maturely in my early twenties as I was widowed at age 23 and left alone with a two-year-old toddler to raise. It felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders as I tried to navigate single motherhood and earning enough to support us. This was definitely not what I had signed up for at such a young age.
“I was so much older then, I am younger than that now” by Bob Dylan
Then came years of a different level of stresses in a new marriage and taking on the mother role for newborn infant twins, as I tried to work my way up my chosen career paths.
Yet today as a retired senior I feel and look better than ever before! There are no “secrets” to living a good healthy lifestyle as so much of it is just common sense.
If I had to make a list of what I believe has contributed to my happiness and wellness, this list would be much of it.
1) Live in love and let go of all that no longer serves you well
2) Eat the good food/eat fresh
3) Exercise and get those 10,000 steps a day
4) Take your vitamins, I am big on taking magnesium and a low dose of aspirin daily, it works for me!
5) Get outside in the fresh air
6) Keep gratitude top of mind as there is always something to be grateful for
7) Live under your financial means so that you are not financially struggling
8) Laugh often it feels so good and is so good for you
9) Get a dog or two!
10) And for me probably the most important of all is marry well, choose wisely and make sure you live in peace and love with your forever friend/partner/lover/spouse
Bonus buy the cute outfit, get your hair and nails done and take the trip … Life is for the living, live it!
This is my list … make one that works for you too. I feel great and I believe you can too!
Writers whether they are poets, song writers, authors, bloggers, journalists and more have something to say. Typically, they are “observers of life” and take in, process and then write about it. You have to be motivated but most important is that desire to express yourself.
Over the holidays one of my favorite young people came to visit and she asked; “Have you been writing?” my immediate and rapid response was, “no, I have nothing new to say.” I have definitely been in an observation and reflective mode. I see things, the news, people acting this way or that and I shrug and often think how bad it must feel to live with such angst, most notably about politics.
The other part as you age is choosing your words or your ventures with discernment, do I want to step into that? Many times, I don’t, because I have cared so deeply for so long about so many people, places and things and at this stage of life (retirement) and in a healthy way, I don’t care. I preserve my happiness and my peace.
What I have given much thought to is how grateful and how blessed I am, how much life I have lived and how what is ahead I look forward to … I have ticked off just a few of my biggest accomplishments and here are a few 1) my loving and long-term marriage of 33 years 2) raising millions and millions of dollars for several non-profits, most notably underserved minority children 3) building a beach house after purchasing a lot of land 4) raising three children of which two were adopted 5) surviving abusive and toxic relationships and managing to maintain a loving and peaceful heart and 6) my books that were published and my many articles and blogs 7) connecting with my friends, family and my many readers and 8) most important and life-sustaining is my relationship to Jesus Christ My Savior.
I am blessed … my life began in a small town in Northeastern Pennsylvania as one of five girls. My childhood was filled with angst and upheaval that often left me nervous and anxious. My parents married each other twice and divorced each other twice, that is only one part of my story. We moved a lot. I was insecure and anxiety ridden as a child. I couldn’t wait to escape it. I married young at 19, got pregnant at 20, had my child just three days after 21 and my husband died when I was just 23. Lots of life for such a young woman. All of these life circumstances I have processed thoroughly and am so happy to be on the other side of it. I am richer for all my many life experiences.
When I was just 26 years old, I purchased my first home as a single mom after becoming a Realtor. Another accomplishment for me to be “successful” I was driven!
Last March we retired to our beach house, I have enjoyed so much reflective time. Some travels but mostly getting to know and love myself again. This time not for all my so called “accomplishments” but for coming out the other side, a place of love and of peace.
A few days ago, I read this, “What if your markers of success were how well you slept at night? How many books you read? How easily you laughed? How much time you spent storytelling, feeling warm in the arms and homes of people you adore?” It hit me! This is my life now, retired and living with my handsome hubby Brian, our two precious pooches, at our beach home! Life is good/great!
Right now, our two pups are at the groomers, and we are getting ready to enjoy lunch out at one of our favorite eateries? Simple pleasures living a simple and happy life – as my husband often says, “We earned it!’
Bernadette A. Sahm 