Happy Endings

"How do you keep doing it after all of these years?" she asked me over lunch.

I shrugged my shoulders and took a second before I responded because, quite honestly, I am baffled that this career of dancing in depravity is approaching thirty years. My days are filled trying to instill hope and desire among the poor, the sick, the abandoned, and the scared. Burn out is common and few stay at it for this many years.

"I guess that I concentrate on the happy endings," I finally said. "I focus on the triumphs rather than the tragedies."

She stared at me for several seconds taking this end. We had known one another for years but it had been a while since I had seen her. Back then we had worked together for several years but she went on to work for the Judicial system and Union Mission kept taking more of me. We were trying to reconnect.

"Well, there are no happy endings in what I do," she finally said. "There are just sad stories."

This took me aback but we didn't linger on it and moved to other things. This happened several months ago but the exchange remains with me.

I believe in happy endings. Of course I am eternal optimist.

My friend Tracy Thompson tells me I continue to believe long after it is obvious that something is not going to happen. She says that I do this at the expense of myself sometimes. And I guess that this has been true from time to time. Even now when things are happening that I desperately wish were different, I remain optimistic.

But you know what, as I look back over my career, both my time at the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel and at Union Mission, so much would have happened if I didn't believe that goodness can come out of desperate and sad situations.

Just at Union Mission, there would be no Magdalene Project, Phoenix Place, Barnes Center, Kole Center, J. C. Lewis Health Center, J. C. Lewis Behavioral Health Center, Brassler Dental Clinic, or Dutch Town campus. Hundreds of people would still be homeless. Thousands of people would not have access to health care. Each of these things happened, in part, because of my belief in happy endings.

Of course, there were a great many people who helped to bring these things about, but in each case, there was a moment when I said to myself first, "I believe."

I still feel sympathy for my friend. As I have observed her over the past several months, I've noticed that she has tried to take on special cases, attempting to create a happy ending every once in a while. I hope that she succeeds.

But I know for me, that even in the darkest of times, when love is lost and happiness seems far away, I believe that there will be a happy ending.