A Century of Blessings, Love & Resilience: Tune into this deeply touching episode where our host interviews her 100-year-old mother. Journey into a lifetime enriched by faith, the blessing of love still strong through 76 years of marriage, and the mother-daughter's shared but different Catholic heritage—the mothers' prayers led to the daughter's adult conversion! Anecdotes about dance parties, interpersonal connections, and hosting gatherings blend with powerful lessons about boldness of faith, l...
A Century of Blessings, Love & Resilience: Tune into this deeply touching episode where our host interviews her 100-year-old mother. Journey into a lifetime enriched by faith, the blessing of love still strong through 76 years of marriage, and the mother-daughter's shared but different Catholic heritage—the mothers' prayers led to the daughter's adult conversion! Anecdotes about dance parties, interpersonal connections, and hosting gatherings blend with powerful lessons about boldness of faith, longevity secrets, and radiant joy, especially as an empty-nester! Of course, she also had adversity in her life, too, but to her credit and contributing to her longevity are her 93-years-long personal relationship with Jesus. The Joy of the Lord certainly is her strength.
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Let's just start with a prayer, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Dear Lord Jesus, I just thank you for this opportunity to be with my mother, Marie Boersma, as we are in Naples, Florida. We're here celebrating her birthday, and I want to have her be my guest on this podcast to share all the ways that you have blessed her in her life, dear Lord. We praise and we thank you for all those blessings. We praise and we thank you for my dad, too, and their long marriage, and I just can't wait to share her with my guests. I am so proud of my mom.
Mom, I love you.
I love you, too, honey.
So, how about, let's see, what would you, let's just start off with you telling everybody some of your favorite blessings.
Oh, there's so many. How long do you have?
We have about a half an hour.
Well, first of all, the fact that I met Dad accidentally while I was going with another boy, and he just was such a salesman. He could talk anybody into anything, and he talked me into dropping this other boy and going with him. We went together for a very short time when he decided we should elope. We did, that was 76 years ago, and we're still just as happy as we can be.
That is a blessing that is not only great and a wonderful example for everybody who knows you, especially for your kids, but it also is statistically nearly impossible—76 years of marriage. How many of you know somebody who's been married anything like that amount of time? It really is miraculous.
And the best thing about that was that Dad surprised me as soon as he met me. He started taking classes to become a Catholic, and he is a very good, strong Catholic—has been for all the years we've been married—which was a great influence on me. So, that's a blessing in my life as well.
Why don't you share some of the things that you and Dad did in your service of the faith of the Lord? I'm thinking of, well, of course, with Dad, he is a lector. He's been a lector, a beautiful lector.
Yes. Very good. For like three different churches, as we moved to better houses, we changed churches. He was always a fabulous lector. I was a Eucharistic minister, so we made sure that our schedules were the same so we could get to Mass at the same time. And it's been just the happiest years of my life.
And with Dad, not only did he proclaim the Word beautifully, but he trained other people to be good lectors. He was always the head of the lectors, almost any parish that you went to, they wanted him to train the other people because he really has a way with being able to proclaim the Word of God.
Right. And he does it beautifully.
You've also done some other things. You've had people into your home. Oh, yes. I really enjoyed that. We always . . . I like to cook, and with five children, we never went out very much, but we had people in. And I had Dad trained in serving so that as I'd stand up to remove the salad plates, he'd stand up. And it was just so wonderful that we had so much fun doing that, just having people into our home to share our home, to share our faith. We always said a blessing, no matter who our guests were. And then they'd say something like, you're both Catholic, we'd say, oh, yes, it's the only way to be.
And life went on, the children grew, they all went to college. And the minute they were off to college, I began to travel with Dad, and I traveled with him. We went everywhere. I've been to Australia six times. We love it there. And I've been just all over, everywhere, Europe many times, just following Dad in his business. And he always said I was an asset to him. I don't know why, but...
I know why, because you have a gift for, a gift of being able to converse with anybody, anywhere, anytime. You have a gift of connection. And you remember people, you remember names, you remember faces. And so if he took you to a business conference—he was in the publishing business—and you'd go to publishing association things or advertising association meetings. And if those were events that included wives or spouses (in those days, it was pretty much wives being included), you would be able to remember not only the men who he knew, but you'd remember the names of the wives. You'd remember something about their children, their families. And so it really made it so that he could also have more of a personal connection with people because you knew all about them, and you remembered them, and you'd already connected with them. That's why you're such an asset.
Well, I'm such a people person. [You are.] And that's why I remembered who they were. I just enjoyed talking to other people, finding out more about themselves. And they love to talk about themselves once you get them started. And so, yeah, I just enjoyed traveling with Dad so much.
It was nice that you were able to do that. When I first asked that question, about things that you did in the home, I was thinking also of things, how you would sponsor or host groups of teenagers, and have them come into your home and teach them or let them have a place to be able to talk about questions of the faith.
Yes. We did. We did that. Every Friday night, there was a group of kids from church, and they liked to come because I made sure that I had a fresh batch of brownies. And so one day, after they'd spent a semester with us, the priest asked them what they liked best about coming to our house to study their faith. And they said, well, the first thing was the brownies.
Well, you know, that's one thing I think a lot of churches have learned, is that sometimes having good food makes a good event. In fact, Toby and I just went to a church event last Friday night, and they had a . . . potluck, and it was great food. And then it turned out to be a time of wonderful fellowship, and they even had karaoke and dancing and all of that. So, speaking of dancing, how about talking a little about you and dancing?
Well, when we were kids, I grew up with three brothers. And when we were kids, my mother and dad liked to dance. My mother especially was a dancer. And so she would encourage us to learn to dance. I didn't need much encouragement. We just loved it. When we were married and we had these children, we couldn't afford a sitter. We didn't want to leave five children with a sitter. So, what we did was we had a house that had a big family room. We used to invite any of the kids' friends to come on over and dance. Well, the kids knew we were good dancers. And so we had a lot of kids come in just to dance, and it was so much fun. It was more fun than going out. And it was a way of staying home and enjoying a Saturday night.
That's funny. I don't actually remember that. I remember a couple of other things about dancing. First, that you and dad met on the dance floor. And secondly, I remember that you had a party one time in that same house, and you put dance wax all over the garage floor to have a dance floor. And the day after the party, I was out there jumping on my pogo stick, and it slipped because of the dance wax on the garage floor. And I ended up landing on my chin and getting stitches. But I still love dancing! It didn't change my opinion about dancing.
And then when you had your 50th anniversary, you took the family on a little cruise, and they had a dance contest on the ship. And there you were, you'd already been married 50 years, and you're out there, and you showed everybody up on how well you and dad could dance. You just showed them how much fun it was to dance and to love one another. And all of us kids ended up with a love of dance. It's definitely one of those blessings that goes down through the generations. I kind of forgot that grandma had been a good dancer. And also dad's parents. I mean, he was enrolled in dance classes when he was under five. There's pictures in the family album of dad going to dance class, all dressed up under five years old. And that's been a family joy.
And I'd like to circle back to the idea of how much you enjoy people and that you are a people person. I'm going to mention that this is a special birthday. I won't say for your sake which one it is, unless you give me permission to. Do I have permission to say? Tomorrow, my mom turns 100 years old, born in October 1923. So it is a BIG celebration. All five of the kids are here, and mom and dad. There's going to be a nice party. We're having a casual get-together tonight on the eve: her last dinner at 99 years old. And then a big party tomorrow. I mean, yeah, tomorrow, Sunday, Saturday night. So we're going to be celebrating that.
And a lot of people have been asking you, what is the secret of living so long? And I know you'll have an answer for that. But I also want to say that in some of my readings, they talk about social connection being a key factor in that. And my parents are two of the most outgoing, congenial people that I have ever met. So what do you think are some of the contributing factors to a good long life?
Well, first of all, you have to have faith. You have to just rely on the Lord to push you in the right direction for everything you do. And if you don't, shouldn't be doing it, he pushes you in another direction. So my faith has been just the most wonderful, wonderful thing that you could have. And the fact that Dad, without ever saying anything to me, decided to take lessons in Catholicism. And when he was all through with those lessons, he let me know that we should go to church together and really say a prayer of thanks. And we've been doing that ever since. I feel so blessed that he would take it upon himself to do that. That is amazing. When we were first married, on a Sunday we'd go to first my church, then his church, and then out for breakfast. Well, it was obvious and didn't take Dad long to realize that our church had so much depth and meaning to our Mass. And theirs was so little. There was faith, but not talked about a whole lot.
In one of our recent conversations, you mentioned how you basically got to know the love of the Lord when you were seven years old. So you've had a personal relationship with God for 93 years!
Well, I couldn't figure out why my parents didn't go. And I never realized that there was a reason. I found out way after, long after I was married, that they had had the four children and decided they couldn't possibly afford any more. And so they were using birth control for that reason. My parents never went to church, but they made sure that WE went to church. And I just loved it from the day I was little. I used to go and walk into church. And I didn't realize at the time how important that was to my faith. But it carried me through.
And I think it would be fun also to tell people how you start your days.
Well, I start my days just one way. I spend the first two hours of my day giving it to the Lord, praising Him, talking to Him, reading the prayers for that day.
The Bible, and reading the Bible passages for the day.
Yeah, yeah. My Bible is right there in the dining room at all times. And it's just the way to start a day that ends up being a good day every day.
And it's fun when I'm visiting because we do that together. Yes, yes, we do. And I'm so pleased that Chris is such a strong girl in her faith. It makes me happy.
And I owe it to you.
Thank you.
There was a period of time when I was not strong in my faith. And I also owe it to you that you were the St. Monica praying for me that whole time.
I sure did.
And when I was pregnant with my first child, you gave me a little devotional to read. It was for mothers-to-be. And it was a faith-based devotional. And I read that every day because I was interested in pregnancy, and it was related to pregnancy and having a child. And I think that really primed my mental pump, so that on the delivery table, when they finally handed me this baby, after a pretty difficult, long labor and a C-section, they handed this baby to me and I took a look at her and I went, "God is real. God is God. This is a miracle. You can't just put a sperm and an egg together and come out with a perfect human being like this without God." And that was my moment of conversion. And you came out to help with the new baby. And I said, let's go to church this morning and thank the Lord for this baby. I think that was probably one of your and my happiest days.
We walked right up front to the front row. We didn't want to miss out on anything. And we had the baby in a little basket. She sat there. She has grown up to be a really wonderful young lady. I'm really, really close to her. Incidentally, for my birthday, she gave me a really nice statue of the Virgin Mary. [Oh, that's sweet.] And I put it on my windowsill where all my favorite birds are. And she said, Kacie said, "Put it with your birds." And I thought, how strange. I have already put it with my birds. That's the Lord helping me do the things that influence me and other people. Because Kacie was pleased when I said to her, "I've already done that." [Oh, that's so nice.] She called on the phone.
And that's when you had that conversation with her. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. And I know our other child, Ryan, is also very excited about your birthday. And she keeps asking for photos. I sent them a photo last night of Scott and Dad together—my brother who you hadn't seen in a long time and my dad. And they were so excited to see that. They say, "keep sending pictures." So everybody in the family is so excited about celebrating this. And I'm glad to be able to share you with those who can watch this podcast. So we'll go back to Dad now. We took a little break. And I just want to wish you again, happy 100th birthday, Mom. I love you so much.
I love you too, honey. Thank you. Thank you for being the girl that you are. Thank you. And the fact that we look so much alike.
Yeah. I'm really grateful for your genes, the longevity. And does this look like somebody even 90, let alone 100? Pretty good. Pretty good.
