{"id":21611,"date":"2026-03-11T11:28:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/guideposts-classics-minnie-pearl-on-appreciating-gods-gifts\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:12:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:12:32","slug":"guideposts-classics-minnie-pearl-on-appreciating-gods-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/health-and-wellness\/life-advice\/finding-life-purpose\/guideposts-classics-minnie-pearl-on-appreciating-gods-gifts\/","title":{"rendered":"Guideposts Classics: Minnie Pearl on Appreciating God&#8217;s Gifts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was 28 years old, the age when most young people have their eyes firmly fixed on the promise of success\u2014and I was a failure. Life had reached a dead end for Sarah Ophelia Colley, the aspiring dramatic actress from Centerville, Tennessee.<\/p>\n<p>Six years earlier, fresh from Ward-Belmont College, I had joined a theatrical producing company in Atlanta, and had been going into small towns and rural communities producing country-style musical comedies.<\/p>\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-ada4f91 e-con-full e-flex e-con e-child\" data-id=\"ada4f91\" data-element_type=\"container\" id=\"home-banner-stn\">\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-72e6e8eb elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"72e6e8eb\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"heading.default\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n<h2 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default\">Community Newsletter<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-261bcec elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"261bcec\" 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Now\",\"type\":\"submit\",\"cellcid\":\"c4725\",\"processing_label\":\"Processing\",\"container_class\":\"\",\"element_class\":\"\",\"key\":\"subscribe_now_1660636976556\",\"wrap_styles_border\":\"\",\"wrap_styles_width\":120,\"wrap_styles_margin\":0,\"wrap_styles_padding\":0,\"wrap_styles_float\":\"\",\"wrap_styles_show_advanced_css\":1,\"element_styles_border\":\"\",\"element_styles_width\":120,\"element_styles_font-size\":\"\",\"element_styles_margin\":0,\"element_styles_padding\":0,\"element_styles_float\":\"\",\"element_styles_show_advanced_css\":0,\"submit_element_hover_styles_border\":\"\",\"submit_element_hover_styles_width\":\"\",\"submit_element_hover_styles_font-size\":\"\",\"submit_element_hover_styles_margin\":\"\",\"submit_element_hover_styles_padding\":\"\",\"submit_element_hover_styles_float\":\"\",\"submit_element_hover_styles_show_advanced_css\":0,\"wrap_styles_advanced\":\"\",\"element_styles_background-color\":\"#00ab84\",\"submit_element_hover_styles_background-color\":\"#00ab84\",\"drawerDisabled\":false,\"id\":28,\"beforeField\":\"\",\"afterField\":\"\",\"value\":\"\",\"label_pos\":\"above\",\"parentType\":\"textbox\",\"element_templates\":[\"submit\",\"button\",\"input\"],\"old_classname\":\"\",\"wrap_template\":\"wrap-no-label\"}];nfForms.push(form);<\/script><br \/>\n                <script id=\"nf-tmpl-cell\" type=\"text\/template\">\n            <nf-fields><\/nf-fields>\n        <\/script><\/p>\n<p>        <script id=\"nf-tmpl-row\" type=\"text\/template\">\n            <nf-cells><\/nf-cells>\n        <\/script><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>But now, in the summer of 1940, the country was in a depression, radio and changing times had altered people\u2019s tastes, and amateur shows weren\u2019t all that big any more.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bit.ly\/guidepostssub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>ENJOYING THIS STORY? SUBCRIBE TO GUIDEPOSTS MAGAZINE!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, jobless and with nothing else in sight, I went back to Centerville. To bring some money into the house, I finally got a WPA job as a recreation-room director. It paid $50 a month, for which I was grateful, but it sure was a dull job.<\/p>\n<p>I felt so frustrated in my plan to be a dramatic star that I kept praying, \u201cGod, where, where, where do I go? What do I do?\u201d And when no answers came to me, I found myself questioning God in despair.<\/p>\n<p>Restless and dissatisfied though I was, it was nice, in a way, to be back home. I tried to relieve the dullness of my job by teaching some of the town\u2019s youngsters music and drama. And when I got a chance, I\u2019d try my luck as a performer myself.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d dress up as this rangy country girl, which I was anyway, and tell little stories and jokes that I\u2019d picked up during my years with the production company, living around country folk. I gave this country girl a name\u2014Minnie Pearl.<\/p>\n<p>Summer faded, and my spirits sank lower and lower; One dreary October afternoon I was in the WPA recreation room, waiting for the children to thunder down on me at three o\u2019clock when a banker friend, Jim Walker, came in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOphelia,\u201d he said, \u201cwe\u2019re going to have a banker\u2019s convention here. I understand that in the evenings you\u2019ve been teaching some children dramatics and dancing and singing. Would you let the children entertain the bankers?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I said, yes, of course. He started to walk away, then he stopped and turned. \u201cOh, by the way,\u201d he added, \u201cthe speaker from Chicago is flying into Nashville and then driving to Centerville. If he\u2019s late, would you mind doing that thing you do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou mean Minnie Pearl?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s it. Would you kill time with this Minnie Pearl thing until the speaker gets here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I told Jim I\u2019d do it.<\/p>\n<p>That night we performed for the bankers. The children sang and danced to old-time, popular songs while I was backstage, disheveled and frantic, getting the children off and on the stage.<\/p>\n<p>We finished the program, and Jim came backstage. \u201cThe speaker\u2019s not here yet, Ophelia. You\u2019ll have to help us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right,\u201d I told him. \u201cJust give me a minute to straighten up.\u201d Then I went out in front of the hundred or so men in the audience and said, \u201cI\u2019d like to give you my interpretation of the mountain girl, Minnie Pearl.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I started telling them about the marvelous, mythical town of Grinder\u2019s Switch. about my Uncle Nabob and Aunt Ambrosia and Brother and his dog and the horseshoe and all those silly things. And the bankers were laughing and applauding. When I ran out of stories, I looked over at Jim, and he shook his head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d he said, \u201che\u2019s not here yet!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So I went over to the piano and started playing and singing\u2014<em>Maple On the Hill<\/em> and <em>Careless Love<\/em> and <em>Red River Valley<\/em> and a lot of other old country songs. The men loved it.<\/p>\n<p>After I\u2019d sung a while, and still no speaker, I said to the audience, \u201cWell, let\u2019s just all sing.\u201d The men joined me in <em>My Wild Irish Rose<\/em> and <em>Let Me Call You Sweetheart<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--pagebreak--><\/p>\n<p>Then finally Jim came over to me and said, \u201cHe\u2019s here. You can stop now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The men shouted. \u201cOh, no! Let\u2019s sing some more!\u201d I smiled real big, thanked them real big, and turned the program back over to Jim.<\/p>\n<p>When I got home, Mama asked me how it went. \u201cOh, pretty well,\u201d I said. I had just spent the evening clowning. It didn\u2019t mean anything.<\/p>\n<p>But one of the bankers in the audience, Bob Turner, knew Harry Stone, the manager of the great country music station in Nashville, WSM.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHarry,\u201d he told him, \u201cthere\u2019s a girl down in Centerville who belongs on that Grand Ole Opry. She\u2019s down on her luck. I know her family; I come from down that way\u2014and if you can give her a break, it sure would be a big favor to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Harry Stone said all right and had me come up for an audition. And that changed my whole life. It was the beginning of Minnie Pearl, and, to me, the beginning of a new way to look at things.<\/p>\n<p>I saw at last that I had become a failure only because I wouldn\u2019t accept what I truly was. I had been trying to become something I couldn\u2019t be. I would never be a great dramatic actress: I was a Minnie Pearl, a plain, comic country girl, poking fun at herself and sharing that fun with others.<\/p>\n<p>When I learned to accept that role, the one God had given me, He turned my failure into success. <\/p>\n<p><em>Did you enjoy this story? Subscribe to <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bit.ly\/guidepostssub\"><strong>Guideposts<\/strong><\/a> <em>magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was 28 years old, the age when most young people have their eyes firmly fixed on the promise of success\u2014and I was a failure. Life had reached a dead end for Sarah Ophelia Colley, the aspiring dramatic actress from Centerville, Tennessee. Six years earlier, fresh from Ward-Belmont College, I had joined a theatrical producing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[252],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[1061],"class_list":["post-21611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finding-life-purpose"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Guideposts Classics: Minnie Pearl on Appreciating God&#8217;s Gifts - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Guideposts Classics: Minnie Pearl on Appreciating God&#8217;s Gifts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was 28 years old, the age when most young people have their eyes firmly fixed on the promise of success\u2014and I was a failure. 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