Women Loving Life Worldwide

Marnie Pehrson May 28th, 2009

Imagine with me for a moment that you are standing amidst a group of people who are observing a sunset. Before you is a beautiful landscape — a lush valley with assorted trees in bloom and a mountain range. The sun is setting in a sweeping display behind the mountain range and all these people have gathered to watch it.

Each of the people in the crowd is wearing glasses. Some glasses are tinted red, others blue, red, yellow, grey or black. The people begin to comment about the sunset. One person says, “Don’t you just love that red sunset?”

His companion wearing blue-tinted glasses answers, “It’s not red, it’s blue.”

“No, it’s not!” says the first. “It’s clearly red. Look at all those beautiful shades of red.”

“Both of you are wrong,” sneers another. “It’s a bright yellow, almost like noon day.”

“Yellow? Where in the world do you get yellow out of that?” cries a woman wearing green glasses.

Before long, the people have clumped into groups based on the color of their glasses. They start pointing at the other groups, “Those people over there think the sunset is blue. They are such liars. It’s clearly red!”

“Now, they aren’t lying,” soothes the green group. “They just aren’t seeing all of the green. Blue is very close to green, you see. So they aren’t lying, they’re just not seeing the full effect. The real liars are those people over there who say it’s all dark and black!”

“No,” cries the yellow group. “You’re all wrong. It’s a sunny day. You’re all crazy. As for those poor people seeing it dark and black, well they are just blind. We should feel sorry for them.”

So the debate continues. Finally, the sunset is over and they each return to their homes. A man named Bob (wearing yellow-tinted glasses) slips into bed beside his wife Lori (who wears blue-tinted glasses). Bob describes the sunset to Lori and the next day she passes along the information to a friend named Mary. As she describes the yellow-tinted sunset through her blue-lens perspective, Mary assumes the sunset was green (blue plus yellow makes green). In fact, it’s very green because Mary happens to wear green glasses.

Mary then passes along to Sue that the sunset last night was green. Sue says, “Oh, no it wasn’t! It was yellow!”

“No, it was green,” Mary retorts. “Bob was there and he said it was green. Lori told me. It was clearly green.”

“You’re lying! Bob said it was yellow last night!” exclaims Sue.

“Well, Bob must be a two-faced liar,” Mary exclaims.

Thus, it continues, Mary and Sue get so mad at each other they won’t have anything to do with each other anymore. In fact, the whole town is in an uproar because each person sides with one group or another and calls the others duped, mistaken or downright liars.

Who’s telling the truth? None of them. Yet none of them is lying either. In reality, God created the sunset with subtle purples, violets, blues, reds, yellows, oranges, and shafts of white light. God placed all the colors of the rainbow in the sunset for the crowd’s enjoyment.

Yet, they could only see what their lenses allowed them. None was lying. They all saw what they said they saw. They all believed it to be the way they perceived it. However, these perceptions were only relative truth — tainted by the tint of their individual lenses.

This story reminds me of Jesus’ admonition, “Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote (splinter) that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam (two-by-four) that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:1-5)

In other words, don’t judge people who wear yellow glasses because you’re probably wearing another color yourself! First, take off your glasses before you start judging others or even before helping them see the sunset. Personally, I believe we’re all wearing one color of glasses or another. Sure, there are moments when we remove them to rub our eyes, and we catch a glimpse of truth. But, the only One who never wears tinted glasses is God.

That’s why Paul advised, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves . . . for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” (Rom. 12:19) What right do we (who are flawed) have to seek retaliation upon another?

So the next time we hear someone describe an event or the next time we feel the urge to find fault or gossip, maybe we’ll remember this little parable and know that only God sees life without glasses. The rest of us are influenced by our life circumstances, upbringing, environment and attitude. If we can remember that, I think we’ll find fewer faults in others and the world will be a better place as a result.

Learn more about Marnie Pehrson and her work at Monetize Your Gifts.

Tags: changing our perceptions, marnie pehrson, parable

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Marnie Pehrson May 13th, 2009

Imagine that you are standing on a white platform high above the earth. You look down at the swirling marble planet beneath you, and a wave of anticipation courses through your soul. You consider the journey upon which you are about to embark. You are only aware of the basics . . . the type of family into which you will be born, a few challenges you selected with your mentors for your optimal development. The main thing you know is that you won’t remember your life here, won’t remember your friends, your family.

You look up. There surrounding you are hundreds of others standing on their own platforms, forming a circle above the opening into space. Some look down with excited smiles, others with creases of worry upon their brows.

Each person, just like you, has a guide dressed in a flowing white robe standing beside them. You watch your best friend at the platform to your left. Her guide whispers something into her ear. She nods her head, offers you one last wave, and jumps. Down she floats, her arms spread wide, her white robe billowing as she descends toward the earth and disappears into the clouds.

You gulp, knowing your turn is coming soon. You look to your guide. “It’s almost time,” he says. His blue eyes stare deeply into yours. “Remember, remember what you decided upon. What is your mission?”

The familiar refrain runs through your mind as it has millions of times before. You know it well — what you are being sent forth to do. While everyone who descends knows they are going to obtain their body, learn to live by faith, and follow the light home, each individual also has a unique mission, a unique message they hope will guide their lives.

Some will discover it and follow it with intention. Others will stumble upon it, living it without conscious awareness. Still others will become lost in the things of the world and completely forget their message and their promise to magnify it. This is the danger of the journey.

You concentrate, repeating your one-sentence mission twice to your guide. He nods his head vigorously, “Good, good, you’ll do fine. Just remember . . . ” He repeats your mission back to you.

“But how will I remember it when I’m going to forget everything?” you ask for what feels like the hundredth time.

“There will be reminders, indicators, signs. Look for them. But most of all,” he taps you where your heart will one day beat. “Most of all, if it’s in here deep enough, it will guide you like a homing signal. Follow it. Live it. Look for the light and it will guide you home.”

Your head bobs up and down and you put your hand over your chest, repeating your mission one more time for good measure. You understand now why your mentors insisted you keep it short . . . simple . . . powerful.

“It’s time,” he says.

You close your eyes and take your very first leap of faith . . .

Did you know that you were born with a powerful message that you are uniquely designed to deliver? Like a gorgeous garden around a central theme, you’re prepackaged with talent seeds to help you convey your message. Marnie Pehrson (a wife and mother of 6) has been helping people like you start online businesses and earn money from their talents since 1994. She is the author of 26 books and ebooks on such topics as How to Get More Done in a Day than Most People Accomplish in a Week and You’re Here for a Reason: Discover and Live your Purpose. . Marnie loves working with entrepreneurs and helping them monetize their gifts so they can deliver their messages in ways that impact the world for good. Consider her a cultivator of soil — a waterer of crops — who is here to help you reap an abundant harvest! Get the first 50 pages of You’re Here for a Reason for FREE.

Tags: life purpose, marnie pehrson, meaning of life, purpose of life

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Joyce Pierce April 23rd, 2009

If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a must see!

I looked at the Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com and learned that the movie was released in 1993. I remember seeing it as a newly-released movie, and later bought the DVD. Critics might not give the movie a high rating, but I agree with one of the comments made on this site about the movie. “Those of you with fathers, those of you who have lost fathers, and those of you who are fathers should see this movie.” That pretty much includes all of us, doesn’t it?

I lost my father when I was a young mother myself. I was mad at him for 20 years after that because he left me. One of the lines in this movie is, “This whole dying thing wasn’t my idea.” It was a message I needed to hear, and of course, I knew that if my father could have had a say in the matter, he would definitely not have died.

The reason I mention this movie is that I love the way it stresses the importance of keeping records! I’ve been a pretty faithful journal keeper all of my adult life. I encouraged my grandfather to write about his life, and I love reading through it, but I sure wish I would have done a video recording of him TELLING me about his life.

In 1991, which was about five years after my grandfather died, my mother came to visit. At the time, she was 71 years old, and in pretty good health. We had just bought a video recorder because every new grandparent has to have one! I had Mom sit on the couch and I set the recorder up on a tripod. I stood behind it and asked her questions. One of the things I do regret is that I didn’t ever come forward and sit beside her, or even give her a hug. There is no record of ME – I am just the voice behind the video.

Here is how we got started:

Tell me about your grandparents.

What were their names?

What do you remember about each one of them?

What about your parents?

What were there names?

What do you remember about them?

Tell me about your siblings. Start with the oldest.

Tell me his name, birth date, what was he like as a child?

What about your oldest sister?

You get the idea. I don’t remember having a script, and watching and listening to it today, you can tell it’s done by an amateur, but the thing that impresses me the most is that I was actually listening to what she had to say, and trying to get her to expand on the topic.

For instance, when she told me she went to Hornbeak High School, I asked her what she remembered about the school. How many were in your graduating class? Who was your best friend?

You can’t script something when you’re really wanting to find out who they are! You just have to listen.

As incredible as it seems to me now, we kept the camera rolling for almost two full hours! I couldn’t get my mother to write one word about her life, but she loved talking about it.

When we finally stopped, I put the tape away and told Mom I wouldn’t show it to anyone until after she passed away. She talked about some sensitive issues that I wasn’t sure she wanted shared with everyone at that point. It was nothing as sensational as the discovery the kids made in “The Bridges of Madison County,” but just some details that I wanted to make sure were recorded correctly.

Seventeen years later, we can now watch my mother’s life story, just the way she wanted to tell it.

When we were told that Mom didn’t have long to live, I took the tape to the video copy store and had three DVDs made. One for me, and one for my sister. The third one was for my aunt. I brought it home and cried as I watched the mother who was animated and very much alive in 1991. There she was on my television screen: talking, making familiar hand gestures, throwing her head back to laugh, with twinkling eyes that were full of life. This was not the mother I had known in recent years; the mother who had merely existed in a worn out body. The mother who was often confused as a result of prescribed medications.

The day Mom passed away, I showed the video to my sister. She couldn’t watch more than about five minutes of it because the emotion of losing our mother was just too much. But she did say something that will forever live in my memory. “Joyce, I don’t know what inspired you to do this, but if I had nothing else of Mom’s, this would be enough. This is priceless.”

Priceless. It truly is priceless.

The wonderful thing about capturing someone on film is that in some ways, they live on forever.

Grandchildren who only knew their great-grandmother as someone who was dependent on us for her care, can learn to know her as was one of the most INdependent people who ever lived. They can come to know her as we all did, when she was the traveling grandma who came to visit quite often. The grandma who took us out for pizza on Saturdays. The grandma who was plump and very snuggable. The grandma my children loved and enjoyed. The grandma who tried to recapture so much of her youth through her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

If you’ve got a video camera on the shelf, get it out! Don’t wait for the next family reunion to record those stories. You may not get Uncle Dave to sit still for two hours, but fifteen minutes is better than nothing.

You don’t need to feel like you’re imposing by asking someone to let you tape their story. Wouldn’t you love to think that someone finds you interesting enough to want to capture your life on camera?

Make every moment count!

Joyce Moseley Pierce is a contributing author to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.  She’s the creator of All They’ll Need to Know and owner of Emerson Publications.  She’s the Family Preparedness Expert for Ideamarketers.com as well as Women Loving Life Worldwide.  Visit www.emersonpublications.com or www.preparedineveryway.com to learn more.  Follow Joyce on Twitter @piercejam.

Tags: album, dad, death, history, journal, life, mom, photo

• Family Preparedness , For Women Loving Life , Life Purpose , Marriage , Parenting , Relationships
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Joyce Pierce April 23rd, 2009

A good friend of mine, Ed, recently lost his father. When he found out my mother was dying, he told me to start gathering pictures so I could put a slide show together. That was the best piece of advice anyone gave me! He told me I could download the program for f*ree here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

I got to work immediately because I didn’t know how much time I had. Fortunately, I ended up with about four weeks to accomplish the task. Here’s what I did:

*Downloaded the software. I found it very simple to use. Of course, I’m one of those people who only reads directions if I can’t figure it out on my own. This was my kind of software!

* Started looking through my own digital files for pictures I had taken over the past 4-5 years. This was pretty simple. It was just a matter of importing the pictures into the program.

* Asked other family members to email me with any photos they had. My cousin and a niece were very helpful in coming up with pictures I had never seen before.

* Went through photo albums and scanned photos. This was the part that took the most time because once the photo was scanned, I had to crop. I was sure glad I got started early on this part!

Before it was over, I had about 15 minutes of video which included about 200 photographs. Photos included individual pictures of Mom, along with pictures of her with her children, grandchildren, and siblings.

As I worked on this project, I can’t tell you how many times I thought about how my mother would have LOVED looking at a slide show like this of her life! Why in the world hadn’t I prepared something like this BEFORE the end of her life?

Now, here I was, seeing pictures of my mother that were new to me. I wanted answers about some of them. Where was it taken? What do you remember about that day? How old were you?

As I imported the pictures, I included whatever information I could come up with on my own. Names of people in the photo, approximate year, clever comments about various poses. She was a real beauty of movie star quality!

Since my mother was a free spirit from Tennessee, I wanted to use Elvis’s rendition of “I Did It My Way,” to go along with the 200 pictures I had gathered. For a fee of $19.95, I was able to do that, but by the time I figured all that out, it was too late. Paying this extra money also gave me the ability to burn a copy of the slideshow as a DVD, but once I got back home from the funeral, it didn’t seem to matter.

I’ll have to say that the slideshow was one of the “hits” for the folks back home in Tennessee. We all enjoyed watching my mother’s life flash before us because it brought back memories of much happier times in our lives.

I know there are many different programs out there to help you tell the story of your family. It doesn’t matter which program you use, or how much money you want to spend.

After we got home, I discovered another way of presenting these photos that would allow me to include the music I wanted at no extra cost. www.onetruemedia.com is a very simple program to use, and since it’s online, you don’t have to download anything. As long as you have internet access to show it, it’s great! One of the great features to this one is that you can send a link to family and friends and they can watch it anytime they want.

I should put a warning label on this project idea, though! Once you get started, it’s addictive. Realize that you’re probably not going to gather every picture ever taken of that person, and you don’t need five different poses of the same thing (unless they’re all just adorable in their own way!). Just start with what you’ve got, and go from there. You can always add or delete photos whenever you want.

Just imagine the possibilities.

*What a great way to review and share your vacation photos!

*What a great gift for someone! Start now and give them the DVD for birthdays and Christmas.

* What a great way to share with family that’s not close by.

I’m thinking about making individual slide shows for everyone in my family!

Wouldn’t the kids or grandkids love watching a video of themselves?

Gosh, who wouldn’t love looking at pictures of themselves and their loved ones!

Share the memories.

Joyce Moseley Pierce is a contributing author to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.  She’s the creator of All They’ll Need to Know and owner of Emerson Publications.  She’s the Family Preparedness Expert for Ideamarketers.com as well as Women Loving Life Worldwide.  Visit www.emersonpublications.com or www.preparedineveryway.com to learn more.  Follow Joyce on Twitter @piercejam.

Tags: album, child, dad, death, family, life, mom, photo, record

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Joyce Pierce April 21st, 2009

With all the interest in scrapbooking in recent years, people are keeping track of their lives through pictures.  That’s okay, but it doesn’t tell us anything about their thoughts or feelings.  People used to keep track of events through letters and recording important dates in the family Bible, but with email and instant messaging, we just are not a record keeping people anymore.

Biographies are written about famous people, but every life is a story unique to the person who’s living it.  You might not have your face on the cover of a magazine, but each life has a beginning and a history.  It is important that we give gratitude for the life we’ve been given, and what better way to express that gratitude than recording it.

The task of sitting down and writing your personal history is overwhelming.  Some people are blessed with the ability to write and some are not, but I have a system for recording your personal history that anyone can do.   I wish I could claim credit for creating it, but I wrote my own personal history many years ago using this system from a book I read.  I’ve taught a few classes on it, and everyone agrees that there’s no easier way to do it.

1.    Get an 8 ½ x 11” spiral notebook.   Mark the front of it with a magic marker or something creative so that you know it’s YOUR personal history.  Think about buying one in a color that reflects your personality, whether it’s red, green, purple, or blue.
2.    Using an ink pen, on the top line of each page, write a topic.  I will give you a few suggestions, but this is YOUR history, so you can use whatever you want.  At this point, all you should do is write the topic.  Nothing else.

a.   My name
b.   My mother
c.   My father
d.   My maternal grandparents
e.   My paternal grandparents
f.    Elementary School
g.   Junior High
h.   High School
i.    College
j.    Friends
k.   Family
l.    Holidays
m.  Birthdays
n.   Dating
o.   Marriage
p.   My husband
q.   My children
r.    Grandchildren
s.    Jobs
t.    Dreams
u.   Goals

3.    When you’ve written at least 20 topics, go back to the first page.

4.    Write just ONE sentence under your first topic.  For example, if your first topic is MY NAME, you might write something like I did.  “My name is Joyce Ann Moseley.”  That’s it.  Keep

5.    Go to the second topic, which in this suggested list is, “MY MOTHER.”  Here I would write, “My mother’s name is Oletha Hayes.”

6.    Continue through the book writing just one sentence for each topic.   While you’re writing, if you think of other topics, just go to the back of your book and add them.  You’ll be surprised how many other ideas pop into your head once you get those creative juices flowing.

7.    Once you’ve written one line for each topic, you can sit back and feel pretty proud of yourself.  Go fix yourself something to drink, or stop to look out the window!  This is more than most people have ever done, and if you stopped there, at least your family would know more about you than they did BEFORE you started this exercise.

8.    Next, go back to topic #1 and write whatever comes to mind.  Using my example, I’ve already written “My name is Joyce Ann Moseley.”   Now I would add, “I was born on October 5, 1949 in Kansas City, Missouri.  My father is the one who named me.  I’ve never really liked the name, and I don’t know where he got it.  My mother just tells me that he wanted to name me Joyce.  Unfortunately, he died before I got curious about it, so I can’t ask him why this name was special to him.”

9.    For the next topic, which is MY MOTHER,  I might take my first sentence, “MY mother’s name is Oletha Hayes,” and add this:  My mother was born on January 24, 1920 in Hornbeak, Tn.  She has two brothers and two sisters.  Their names are Onan, Flavil, Inez and Laura and they were all born in Hornbeak, Tennessee.”

10.    Continue through the notebook until you have written at least one more sentence on each topic.  Try to write a short paragraph.   Include names, dates and places.

11.    Use your imagination and be creative.  One of my topics is on The Beatles.  I wrote:  “I was sitting in front of the television at Joy Baldwin’s house the night that the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  This was their first appearance in America.  You could hear all of the girls in the audience screaming, and we were screaming, too.  Her parents thought we were crazy.  I remember when they flashed “Sorry, girls, he’s married” when the cameras closed in on John Lennon.  Joy’s favorite Beatle was George and she told me I couldn’t have him.  I had to pick my own, so I chose Paul.  Turned out that was a choice I’ve never regretted.”

12.    That one topic started out as a simple “The Beatles” at the top of my page.  My first line was “I was sitting in front of the television at Joy Baldwin’s house the night that the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.”  It wasn’t until the third time I went through the notebook that all of this information was added, and if I were to look at it today, I would add even more, because now that I have lived to be older and wiser, I can see more meaning in that one single event.

I would encourage you to take these ideas and start writing your own personal history.   It is my desire that as these thoughts come to mind that you will find joy in appreciating the simple things in life.  If you find that some of them bring you pain, then take this opportunity to write about them.  At one point in my life, it became important to me to write about a period of time that had been extremely painful to me.    I created an outline of events, and then basically filled in the blanks with the history and dialog.  That’s really what you’re doing here.  The topic is your outline, and the blank page is your space to tell your story.  If you find that you need more pages, then go to the back of the book and continue.

I can testify to you that in telling my story, I was able to see things through different eyes, and only then could the healing begin.  It is my prayer that this exercise in writing your personal history will bring you joy, bring you closure, and bring you peace.  May God bless you in your journey.

Joyce Moseley Pierce is a contributing author to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.  She’s the creator of All They’ll Need to Know and owner of Emerson Publications.  She’s the Family Preparedness Expert for Ideamarketers.com as well as WomenLovingLifeWorldwide.com.   Visit www.emersonpublications.com or www.preparedineveryway.com to learn more.  Follow Joyce on Twitter @piercejam.

Tags: family, history, journal, joy, personal, scrapbook, trials

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