You can go your own way...

This morning on the way to school a Fleetwood Mac song came on the radio.
Katie sang along.  Yes.  She knows the words to Fleetwood Mac songs.  It's uncanny.
Many times I ask her how she knows the song...but this morning I just smiled.
I smiled and said, "This song was popular when I was at Hillsdale. Probably 1978."




(While I may have the foggiest memory this side of Madison, I can tell you the year of a song and imagine myself where I was while I was hearing it.  I am popular music savant.  I usually don't know who is singing it or the words.  But I know the year.)
(Oh and BTW, this morning I shopped for ingredients for a new pasta salad.
I forgot the pasta.)


I then told Katie that the Fleetwood Mac album was one of the highest selling records of all time.
I said, this was before Michael Jackson.  But then I corrected myself...because Michael Jackson was in the Jackson five when I was a child as The Jackson Five.  I loved their records and would see them on American Bandstand.

ABC.
Easy as 123.

And then Michael was on his own and took the world by storm with BAD and then Thriller.
I remember dancing to his album Off the Wall in 1980 in my apartment in Lake Forest.
By myself.




This was one of the first music videos I had ever seen.


But here is the interesting part of the story.

I went to see Michael Jackson in concert in 1975 in the round somewhere near Glenview Illinois.
The place was not even half full and I swear we were at the matinee.
Why was I there?  I was invited to go by a woman I had become friends with over the summer in Mincoqua.  I babysat her little boy a few times and watched their house up north a little bit.  I stopped at her house in Glenview at the end of the summer for a day or two on my way to college and she had tickets for this little concert.
A mom, a teenager and a little boy.

Michael and I are the same age I think...he looked so skinny and tall and much younger than me.
I don't remember much about the songs.  I just remember him spinning.
A lot.


So I saw Michael Jackson in concert.

But in true Donna style, I saw him when he was at his least popular.

And you know what it makes me think about?

It makes me think of all the people who love doing something and they keep doing it.
Even when the room is only 1/3 full.

They keep trying.

I admire that kind of perseverance.

In any field.  In any form.
No matter what.

Persevere.



I think of this....


Romans 5:3-4 
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.


Encourage one another,
Donna