My sister and her teenage son were visiting from Colorado. We were walking back from the coffee shop near my house when I looked down and there it was—a hundred-dollar bill, waiting patiently on the pavement for me to leisurely bend over and pick it up. The two of them hadn’t seen it and they were astonished and envious that I had.
The extra cash was just what I needed. It allowed me to take us all out to dinner and buy some birthday gifts for my nephew.
This week the word perseverance has been scratching at me, wanting to be written about. It’s pestered me with all the doggedness you would expect from it. So here I am, struggling to come up with an opening story to illustrate what it means to persevere and why it interests me.
I don’t have a story. But that in itself is perfect. Because the essence of perseverance isn’t in the moment of triumph, realization, or reward. It’s not about the outcome. It is, by definition, the steady persistence in a course of action—and here’s the best part—in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.
I was driving in the car with my 16-year-old son when I realized I had nothing to write about this week.
“I have no ideas for my blog,” I told him. “I’m drawing a complete blank.”
“Why don’t you write about the movie you went to?” he said, referring to Bohemian Rhapsody. “You liked that.”
If you’ve ever been laid low by illness or injury, you know how frustrating it is to lie there thinking of all the things you should be doing. You plan how you’ll “catch up.” You make a lot of promises to yourself. Once I feel better, I’ll exercise. I’ll cook more. I’ll go to the beach and sit in the sand. And I’ll balance that with being super productive. I’ll write every day. I’ll do the dishes!
My ex-husband and his new wife were a picture-perfect couple. So much so that they were photographed for the cover of Crain’s Chicago Business magazine. They were featured in an article about how stepparents are supposedly either relegated to support status or are simply invisible.
But his new wife wasn’t invisible. She posed with him and our three children on the front steps of my house — sorry, now their house— as if she had lived there for more than two months.
👉 Enjoy dedicated writing space just steps from Lake Michigan
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