Living Happily Ever After
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Look…See

Date: December 15, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

Step 6: Look for miracles and tender mercies in your life, they will be there, and be grateful for them.

“David Bednar said, “…Tender mercies are the very personal and individualized blessings, strength, protection, assurances, guidance, loving kindnesses, consolation, [and] support…which we receive.”

I received many tender mercies at a time when I seemed to have not much else.

For example, and as I’ve mentioned before, when people asked if I needed anything, I told them we were fine. And we were “fine.” We lived as scant an existence as possible and although we had food to eat, it was very basic food—NO extras of “fun” food. And then one day, a friend showed up with an entire carload of “fun” food from Costco: Mickey Mouse-shaped chicken nuggets, Oreos, chips, doughnuts, fruit snacks, crackers, juice, fresh fruit, all the fun “extras” when you’re eating and living as inexpensively as possible. My children were overjoyed! It was like Christmas to them (and they still talk about that delivery to this day.)

But the tender mercies didn’t end with Colorado.

I moved to Utah and began a new life feeling very much a failure. I didn’t think things could get any worse until they did—when I made the fateful error of heading to the grocery store on a Saturday night. I didn’t have anything else to do, I didn’t know anyone, I had to feed my kids, there was a big sale at a neighborhood grocery store, so off I went. I was convinced I was the only “loser” who grocery shopped on a Saturday night!

Every shopping cart that night appeared to be pushed by a happy, in love, couple with plenty of money to pay for their purchases. I had none of that anymore and had never felt so alone or worthless. When my shopping was done and just when I thought I couldn’t feel any lower, a car drove by me in the parking lot and the driver ridiculed my purchases through his open window. Those thoughtless words uttered by one man devastated me!

In the dark, tears welling in my eyes and feeling SO ALONE and appalled that apparently I couldn’t even purchase food for my children without being persecuted and wondering how I was going to endure the next 40-50 years of my new life, I unlocked by mar, turned to unload my cart, and was stunned to see a man standing there in the darkness. He had come from out of nowhere and without a word, grabbed the purchases from my cart and unloaded them into the back of my car.

When he was done, he paused for a moment, looked into my eyes, and smiled at me—a smile of compassion, and although it was dark, I noticed that his eyes were light blue, his skin was tan, his teeth were white and his hair was dark but slightly graying. And then without a word, he got into an older, dark-colored Suburban I suddenly noticed was parked next to me, and drove away.

I got in my car, completely changed, thanks to that anonymous man, whoever he was, and his kind service to me. For a brief moment I hadn’t been alone, a man had been kind to me (which I really needed at that stage of my life!) and for a moment I felt like everything was going to be ok.

I don’t believe anyone makes it through this life without problems and challenges and sometimes, tragedies and misfortunes. However, if we reach deep enough and look hard enough, we will see the miracles and tender mercies that are ours and will be able to feel and recognize just how much we have been given.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” (Henry David Thoreau)

It Takes More Than That!

Date: October 25, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” (Theodore Roosevelt)

Teddy Roosevelt, a former president of the United States, was shot by a saloonkeeper while campaigning in Wisconsin in October 1912. The bullet lodged in his chest after penetrating his steel eyeglass case and the 50-page, single-folded copy of his speech he was carrying in his jacket.
Roosevelt, an experienced hunter, decided that since he wasn’t coughing blood the bullet hadn’t completely penetrated the chest wall to his lung so he didn’t go to the hospital immediately but instead, delivered his speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes, opening his speech with this line: “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
Later, due to the location of the bullet, doctors decided it would be more dangerous to remove the bullet than leave it in place; Roosevelt carried the bullet with him the rest of his life.
Now, I have nothing against obtaining medical care when injured. In fact, I believe I would have gone straight to a hospital had that happened to me, but I admire Teddy for his grit. And I can’t help but think we’d have a lot more triumphs and successes among us and throughout the world  if everyone, when faced with a challenge or an adversity  responded to life by saying, “It takes more than that!” and carried on, and eventually triumphed, despite it.

Speaking of Patience…

Date: May 22, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.” (Hal Borland)

Riddle of the day: What isn’t grass, but is not quite a tree? A bush. In my world, a peony bush—to be exact.

I wrote about my peony bush several posts ago; the bush I authorized my husband to remove for its failure to bloom (because life is too short to waste time not blooming!) Later I heard from a blog reader that I may have been too hasty, a little too impatient, with my slow-to-bloom bush as peony plants can apparently take 3-4 growing seasons after transplanting to bloom again. Oops. I guess I have more to learn about patience, huh? And a realization I’d come to, too little too late, to be of worth to my garden.

However the other day I was in the corner of the Utah garden where my peony bush had failed to thrive…and there it was! Bigger than ever, with flower blossoms looking ready to burst open at any time. (I’m not sure what plant my husband removed, but clearly it wasn’t the peony bush!) It goes to show, again, that, ”A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.” (Elbert Hubbard)

Pink and fluffy. Beautiful to behold. Lasting.

So if you haven’t achieved your happily ever after yet, don’t abandon your quest. Hang in there, work to bloom a little longer and it will happen. I know it. My peony bush, and my own unexpected life, are proof.

The Open Book of My Life

Date: April 9, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak to graduate students of Brigham Young University’s business school who were studying fraud and ethics. The professor who invited me asked me to share my story and my thoughts on how fraud happens and how good people can get caught up in it. I’ve written about my experience quite a bit, I’ve spoken about it to various audiences quite a lot, but it was a different experience to ponder what to say when my life was an open book for all to study in an academic setting!

Here are some highlights from what I shared. I began by introducing myself with Part One of the 2010 Colorado 9News story by Cheryl Preheim. Then I said, “Well, there you have it. That’s me. I’m Andrea Merriman and I’m here today to talk about what it’s like after almost 20 years of marriage, four children, and what I thought was a wonderful life of world travel, financial prosperity, community and church service to have my life and my world collapse in one unexpected moment, the result of something I never EVER imagined would be a part of my life: FRAUD.

It was the worst nightmare I could never have imagined, only unfortunately, it was very real and sadly, it was now my life. You could title it:

Hold On—I’ve Never Smoked, Tasted Alcohol, Tried Drugs or Cheated in School, This Can’t Be Happening To Me!

No Way! I’m A Cougar Club Member and Have $10 Million In The Bank, I Can’t Be Penniless

I’ve Never Stolen A Thing In my Life, Not Even A Grape From the Grocery Store Without Paying For It

But the reality is titled more like this:

Think and Grow Rich…With A Ponzi Scheme

How To Win Friends and Influence People…Then Spend The Best Years of Your Life Behind Bars

What To Expect When You’re Expecting…5-7 Years and Get More Than The Max

Gone With The Wind…And The U.S. Marshalls

Crime and Punishment

From BYU to Federal Prison in 16 “Easy” Years

In truth, however, it’s much worse. You lose every material thing in your life, you lose the immaterial things like your good name and reputation, your wife, your children, your family and your friends, and then on top of that, you lose your entire life and your freedom, as well.

So what does all of this have to do with you? You may be sitting comfortably in your seats knowing you’re eagle scouts, you practice your religion, you’re at BYU living the honor code… something like this could never happen to you. Twenty-two years ago, I was just like you.

So how does this happen? How did a decent man fall so far? How did he do what he did to himself, to me, to his children, to his family, and to his victims?

I was interviewed by the MSNBC show, ‘American Greed’ recently and they asked basically the same question: How does a Ponzi scheme take place? How does a person get caught up in fraud that results in crime? How does it happen?

My answer?

One component of fraud is fear—fear of failure, fear of having to tell others you’ve failed, fear of losing your reputation for success by failing at something, fear of loss of job…But I also believe that selfishness, greed and pride are at the heart of it. You can’t commit fraud without them.

I also don’t believe every criminal sets out with the intent to commit a crime. I think there are good people who make a mistake, try to ‘fix it’ and fail and then choose to cover it up as they continue to work to fix it, but it’s too late. The MOMENT you ignore a mistake or attempt to disguise or try to hide even a small error is the moment your fraud begins.

Dieter Uchtdorf taught ‘Small Errors Can Have a Large Impact on Our Lives.’ He related it to airplanes and flight, but I believe it has application in business as well. He said, ‘The difference of a few degrees may seem minor. But even small errors over time can make a dramatic difference.  Suppose you were to take off from an airport at the equator, intending to circumnavigate the globe, but your course was off by just one degree. By the time you returned to the same longitude, how far off course would you be? A few miles? A hundred miles? An error of only one degree would put you almost 500 miles off course. Guard against the many little rationalizations, little white lies, misleading statements that are true but maybe not the whole truth, and courageously stay the ethical course.’

Stay on the straight and narrow path professionally and personally. (By the way, I believe ‘narrow path’ is no exaggeration.) It’s a narrow path, and when you start rationalizing and messing with the boundaries of it, you’re quickly into the gray and questionable area. And when you step off the clearly defined track of righteousness, it’s a very slippery and surprisingly short fall to the mists of darkness and impropriety.

In addition to correcting your course immediately and frequently, keep your heart in the right place. Lock your heart against things with no eternal value. Do whatever you need to do to keep your heart and your priorities in the right place in the workplace and in your professional endeavors. It can be pretty heady to go from college poverty making $4.90/hour (what I made when I was at BYU) to after graduation making $18k/month—I know, because that was my experience; that’s what my former husband made as an investment banker right out of college in the days when he was a law abiding citizen, prior to creating his Ponzi scheme.

Check your greed. Because at some point, close to $20k/month wasn’t enough. He had to have more and more and more until he sold out his wife, his children and his soul for money. Don’t make that mistake.

How do you prevent a fall like the one that destroyed my ex-husband? I think Mosiah (in the Book of Mormon) said it best: “But this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves and your thoughts and your words and your deeds and observe the commandments of God and continue in the faith of what ye have heard…even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O man, remember and perish not.”

I apologize for the seriousness of my comments today, but I not only feel very strongly about the importance of living a life of integrity, I’ve lived through the nightmare that results when a person fails to do that professionally. So here’s my last bit of advice, courtesy of Benjamin Franklin, before you depart, as many of you graduate and go forth not only to serve but to establish your career, demonstrate to the world of business what you’ve been taught, what Brigham Young University is about and what you stand for:

‘Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no persuasion move thee, to do anything which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollity; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.’

Your career and the rest of your life will be what you make of it—make them ethical, keep them fraud free and make sure every workday is, as Benjamin Franklin advised, a continual Christmas through your hard work and ethical business decisions. Thank you for letting me share a little bit of my story with you today. My best wishes and good luck to you all in your futures.”

There was a brief question and answer session afterward. As I drove home after it, I was struck by the thought that again, another unexpected experience has been mine. Had anyone told me in March 2009 when my world ended in a moment that three years later I’d not only be blogging about my unexpected life but also speaking to various groups and organizations about it, including Brigham Young University, I would NEVER have believed them!

Life is great, isn’t it? Hard, but full of amazing experiences. Never forget that wonderful blessings and moments are born of adversity, even from those challenges you can’t comprehend surviving much less enduring. I met some great people that day of my BYU speech—sharp college students with their futures ahead of them, children of friends and blog readers from Colorado, a successful businessman, BYU professor Mark Zimbelman and his cute teenage daughter.

Prior to my speech, the businessman asked me if I was nervous or if it was difficult to speak about my experience. No, it isn’t difficult. But here’s what apparently is: ”There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.” (Winston Churchill)

Game Report

Date: September 14, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Failure is simply the non-presence of success. But a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.” (Orlando Bloom)

The second soccer game was…a bit of a fiasco.

I dashed from work directly to the playing field, got caught in horrendous traffic, and made it there just in time for the start of the game. Not a moment to spare—or to change out of my work clothes. So once again, I coached in a skirt. But this time, in high heels as well!

I’m not sure why, maybe I didn’t look serious enough about soccer or sporty enough in my skirt and heels, but I experienced some coaching difficulties. I had dads on the sidelines sending boys into the game on their own; I had little boys arguing with me when I tried to rotate them out to give every boy a chance to play; and then one of my players got ejected from the game for getting a little too rough, hitting and wrestling the other players!

At the end of the quarter when the ejected boy was allowed to play in the game again, my son ran and welcomed him back with a quick wrestle—so the boy told the referee on MY SON! (Thankfully, the referee continued the game and I gave my son a quick reminder about not wrestling during soccer games, explaining AGAIN that we don’t wrestle during soccer games or we don’t get to play, as the playing continued on around us.)

The other coach/referee interacted with me so much during the game one woman on the sidelines approached and asked, “It that man your husband?”

As I walked to the sideline after that one, all I could do was shake my head and ask myself with a laugh, “HOW did THIS become MY life?”

I remembered, again, how far I’ve come in an unexpected life: divorced, traumatized financial disaster to remarried, at peace, first-time soccer coach in just two years! I recall shaking my head but not laughing, asking myself that very question in 2009 and having a very different answer. Proof again, and I can’t say it enough, that it IS possible to rise from the ashes of whatever misery you’re handed, to create a new life of happiness, to laugh and to eventually “win” again.

Yes it’s possible.

My son even scored four goals.

“We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.” (Dale Carnegie)

It’s Still Good

Date: January 11, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four.  Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye.” (Winston Churchill)

The new year has begun. My children have returned to school. My daughter spent a couple of hours on her math last night, trying to get things to work out perfectly for her equations. She was frustrated. I could relate.

I’d been evaluating some things in my life that were falling short of my vision of perfection. And while I believe in continual evaluation and constantly seeking to improve myself and my life, my thoughts were an exercise in frustration. Which led to worry. Which led to lots of other feelings. Things were not adding up the way I’d planned.

Then I came across a story by Gordon Green, originally published in The Reader’s Digest in the 1950s, about a farming family. Their finances were tight but they sacrificed to pay for an electrical line up their lane the year electricity came to their town. They acquired brilliant light bulbs that dangled from each ceiling; there were no more lamps to fill with oil, no wicks to trim, no more sooty chimneys to wash. Their lamps went quietly off to the attic. Unfortunately, electricity was the last good thing to happen to their family that year as the family experienced challenging weather, crop failure, and other setbacks. Their mother suggested the family forget Thanksgiving that year. Their father showed up with a jackrabbit and asked his wife to cook it. The children refused to eat it; the mother cried.

The father got an oil lamp from the attic, put it on the table, lit it, and turned out the electric lights. When there was only lamp light again, the family could hardly believe their home life had constantly been that dark before! They wondered how they had ever seen anything without the bright light made possible by electricity. They were grateful for what they had.

Like the farm family, I’ve lived through MUCH darker times (when there weren’t just a few frustrations here or there, or a few challenges to overcome, but NOTHING added up the way I’d planned or expected it to.) Seeing how far I’ve come gave me a better perspective on my present and reminded me how grateful I am for my life—unexpected, slightly imperfect as parts of it may be. I know there’s a purpose to imperfection; to challenge; to adversity. You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out. (Martha Graham) The flaws are there for our own good, for our growth and development. To expand our soul. To make us better.

Note to self: In life, things won’t always add up perfectly. Things don’t always turn out the way you expect. (I know this! WHY do I so quickly forget? Why do I have to constantly relearn that?) And if they don’t, it’s ok. Don’t worry. Don’t stress. Prepare to be enlarged through the experience of overcoming whatever you feel doesn’t quite add up to perfection. It’s still good.

“A good garden may have some weeds.”  (Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732)

But it’s still good.