Living With Unhappy Endings

by Traci Hubbard

There’s a quiet fear most of us carry that we don’t say out loud: What if this story doesn’t end well? What if our prayer isn’t answered the way we hoped? What if the healing doesn’t come? What if the relationship doesn’t mend? What if the future looks smaller than we imagined? The Spirit thunders into our honest, human fear, when Paul writes, “If God is for us, who is against us? Nothing, no thing, no one in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And then Mark gives us the story of the rich young ruler who walks away from Jesus sad, which is not a happy ending. And folks, that’s important for us to understand. Because this story in Scripture is brave enough to show us a narrative where someone meets Jesus and still walks away grieving. The rich young ruler had everything except he did not live consciously and forfeited his ability to choose freedom.

Notice he runs up to Jesus, kneels, and asks the right question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He has a strong moral compass. He is successful, respected, faithful. The kind of person every church committee would love to have. And Jesus looks at him and loves him. Please don’t miss that. Before Jesus challenges him, He loves him. Then comes the moment that lands like a stone, “Sell what you have. Give to the poor. Then come, follow me.” Mark’s inked papyrus tells us, “He went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” That’s an unhappy ending. At least for now.

Even though Jesus is standing right in front of him offering the true, real, eternal kin-dom, he walks away sad because he cannot, or perhaps, will not let go of the life he’s created. And here’s the uncomfortable truth for all of us to swallow, many of us understand that man a little too well. Maybe what we are clinging to isn’t money. Maybe it’s control of a situation or person because we believe our ways are the right and life-giving ways. Maybe it’s our expectations in our relationships or what we feel we deserve. Or maybe we cling to the future we have planned, to the ending we wanted. And when life doesn’t give us that ending, we feel like we’re losing everything.

I find it sad that the disciples are shocked by Jesus’ comment that they consider a bit wild when he says, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Listen to the panic in their voices when they ask, “Then who can be saved?!” Why are they panicked? Because they thought a life of blessing meant good outcomes, smooth endings, happy stories. I imagine Jesus watching the dust settle as the man disappears in the distant and gently, almost whispering, “With humans it is impossible, but not with God.” His comment reframes their idea, our understanding, around what a happy ending might be.

Jesus is teaching that the kin-dom of Eternal LOVE is not built on getting the ending we want. It is constructed on being held by Eternal LOVE no matter how the story unfolds. Romans chapter 8 is written for people whose stories contain suffering and pain. The Spirit of our Divine Holder never says, nothing will go wrong, or everything will work out beautifully, or that we will always experience a happy ending. What our Divine Friend is reminding us is, “In all these things we are more than conquerors…”

In these things.

Trouble. Hardship. Loss. Grief. Rejection. Fear. Loneliness. Personal moral failure. Great uncertainty. These things and more. But then we read a promise that feels like oxygen, “Nothing… will be able to separate us from the love of Sweet Mystery.” Not a cruel diagnosis. Not a broken relationship. Not disappointment. Not Addiction. Not words we regret speaking. Not the loss of someone we loved more than we could ever say. Not any kind of ending we never wanted. Paul is saying, the ending may be unhappy, but the love is unbreakable.

I once knew a woman named Margaret who had the most cheerful kitchen you’ve ever seen. Bright butter yellow walls with a stenciling that read, “A Day without Wine is like a Day without Sunshine.” Her table was always covered in crumbs. Her radio was always on playing Nat King Cole, Etta James, and Big Band classics that were slightly gargled because the antenna was bent. Margaret’s husband had been sick for a long time, and everyone knew the ending wasn’t going to be the one she prayed for. One day I asked her, “How are you doing, really? On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the best, how are you doing?” She poured some more coffee into my cup like this was the most normal day in the world and said, “Well,” and then she sat down, smiled and put her hand over mine, and said, “I cry a lot in my laundry room. But I laugh a lot in my kitchen. I know the Spirit is in both rooms, so I might as well visit both.”

Folks, this is the meaning in Romans 8 wearing a flour dusted apron. Margaret wasn’t pretending. She wasn’t denying the ending. She wasn’t walking away from the grief. But she also wasn’t walking away from awe, or joy, or presence. She had discovered something the rich young ruler hadn’t yet…we can lose the ending we wanted and still not lose the Presence of the Divine.

No filter Peter says what the disciples and what many of us have thought, “Look, we have left everything and followed you!” In other words, “Is this worth it? Is continuing living with purpose, no matter how small it may feel to purposes we have lived into before, is living and loving worth it when we cannot control the outcome?” And then we listen to Jesus say something almost unbelievable, “There is no one who has left house or family or fields for my sake who will not receive a hundredfold… along with persecutions… and in the age to come, eternal life.” Notice He does not remove the persecutions, the pain, the misunderstandings, the heartache, the fear. Jesus simply promises that loss is never the whole story.

So how do we live in and with unhappy endings?

Awe…awe is what keeps us from becoming bitter when the story hurts. Awe is noticing the way light comes through the window, even in a hospital room. Awe is the way someone holds your hand at a funeral. Awe is the robin perching on a rock outside your window and singing her song. Awe is the feeling of offering forgiveness and being forgiven. Awe is the kiss goodnight after a long day when you and your partner didn’t like each other very much. Awe is the way a song still catches in your throat. Awe is the place we go to receive empowerment to say, “This is not the ending I wanted… but LOVE is still here. LOVE will always be with me.”

The rich young ruler couldn’t see past what he was losing. Margaret could still see what she was held by.

Do we want a miracle? Well, lean in, because here is a quiet one that many of us miss. The miracle is not that every story ends happily. The miracle is that nothing can pry you or me out of LOVE’s hands while our story unfolds. That’s what Paul is shouting. That’s what Margaret was living. And that’s what the rich young ruler had not yet discovered. And maybe that’s what we are still learning. Because sometimes faith looks like crying in the laundry room and laughing in the kitchen. Faith is trusting the Holy is with us in the hugs and in the shatterings. Sometimes faith is not getting the ending we wanted but discovering that the heart and presence of LOVE is bigger than the ending we feared. And that is where awe lives. Right in the middle of stories that break our hearts wide open. But oh, my friends, this is such a tender, honest place to be, to live.

Most of us were raised on stories where everything ties up neatly at the end. The glass slipper finds the right girl. The soldier receives a medal of honor. Our child doesn’t die. Mom, Dad, brother, sister, or friend, will beat their illness, their depression, or their addiction. The hard to breathe moments will go away. The broken relationship will heal. The prayer gets answered the way we hoped.

But real life? Sometimes the ending is not happy. Sometimes the diagnosis doesn’t change. Sometimes the goodbye is final. Sometimes the prodigal doesn’t come home. Sometimes the depressed take their lives. Awe is what keeps sorrow from becoming cynicism.

When life hurts long enough, the great temptation is not sadness. It’s hardness. We start protecting ourselves by making our world smaller…smaller expectations, smaller hopes, smaller wonder, and smaller faith. Awe interrupts that shrinkage. Awe is when, in the middle of grief, our eyes are opened to see what matters the most right now and we experience awe again. We feel it in the laughter of a friend, in children when they are playing, when the sky is moving with colors no human could design. Awe refuses to allow pain to define our story. When endings are unhappy, we wrestle with “what if’s.”

Awe gently whispers, “You are inside a story far larger than the chapter you are currently experiencing.” Awe keeps us soft and empowers us to fully live and love during and after unhappy endings. It keeps our loving and living from being postponed until things get better. Awe pulls us into the present moment. This very moment.

So, how do we live then? We stop trying to fast-forward. We live consciously in the chapter we’re in while we let go of trying to control the ending. We still have time to live gently, one moment, one hour, one day at a time.  We still have time to stop waiting for the story to improve before we allow ourselves to be human. Folks, the Holy is not just at the beginning and ending of our stories. Eternal Love is with us in every moment. As long as we have breath to live and love, grief will always accompany our journey. How lucky we are to be human. How blessed we are to be able to choose to live consciously and when we do, to be surprised by awe! May we remember that miracles do not make reservations, and that even in our last breath, there is not an unhappy ending waiting for us. There is only love and beginning again. May it be so, amen.