From ”Pretty Good” to RADIANT JOY Podcast EP 10: Wisdom from a Centenarian: Unlocking Secrets of a Long, Fulfilling Life

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 alwa