“Dancing with the Stars” has had a pretty rough season. Contestant Jane Seymour’s mother passed away, then Seymour came down with food poisoning. Scheduled singing guests Jennifer Lopez and Gloria Estefan had to reschedule their performances because of deaths in their families. Then the show was affected by both the Malibu fires and the Writers Guild strike.
Marie Osmond may have had the worst luck of all, though: she fainted on live TV after a particularly athletic dance number, her teenage son recently entered rehab, and her father passed away. Marie, a veteran performer, insisted on staying on the show, following the old adage that the show must go on. Just before her father had died, she’d performed a jive number on the show where she and professional dance partner Jonathan Roberts dressed in ’40s gear as a tribute to Marie’s parents, who met after World War II.

After missing last week’s results show to be with her family, Marie returned to “Dancing” this Monday to do two more dances. During an interview, Marie said that she wanted to remain on the show despite her family tragedy. She said that she had opened the Bible to a random page and landed in the Book of Ecclesiastes. “It said … there’s a time to mourn and a time to dance,” she recalled. “And I felt like it was almost from my dad saying, ‘This is your time to dance.’ ” Many of Marie’s relatives, including several of her children and her brother Donny, were in the audience that night, and they were all clearly moved by Marie’s words and performances. She’s now in the final four on the show, with more dancing to come on Monday.