What Difference Do It Make? (19 page)

BOOK: What Difference Do It Make?

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“The night I finished the book, I remember praying that Deborah would be the first person I saw when I got to heaven,” she says. “At the same time, I was concerned about my husband. He was going to be going on without me. I wanted to talk to Ron and see if he was okay, see how he was managing.”

In April, when Melinda and Howard visited again, Erin told them how much she'd liked our book.

“We're going to see Ron Hall's partner at an art show tonight,” Melinda said. “Maybe he can put you in touch with Ron.”

And that's how it happened that, within a day or so, I had Erin Cortright on the phone.

I started off the conversation asking about her illness, how she was feeling, that sort of thing. Erin answered me politely but quickly fast-forwarded the conversation. “I don't want this call to be about me,” she said. “I know what's going to happen to me, and I've accepted that. I'm at peace with it. Now I want to talk about you and Denver. I want you to tell me everything you've done since Deborah left earth and went to heaven because I'm going to be going there soon, and when I get there, I want to tell her everything!”

I have no idea whether our loved ones watch us from heaven, keeping up with our earthly lives the way some folks keep up with their daily soaps. Since the Scripture says that in heaven there are no more tears, I tend to think the souls up there can't see the people down here. I don't see how they could watch our tragedies unfold and not cry over them. Wouldn't it be wonderful if they could only see the good parts?

Holding the phone, I sat in my bedroom at the Murchison estate, looking at a credenza filled with framed photographs that seemed sharply divided into two erasâWith Deborah and Since Deborah. There were pictures of Deborah with Carson, Deborah with Regan, Deborah and me posing at some resort or another, having had no idea when the picture was snapped that soon death would draw a line across time.

So even though I didn't know for sure, I liked the idea that in Erin I now had a link to what Denver calls “the other side.” A messenger who was not only willing but also
eager
to get there and fill my wife in on whatever she might have missed.

“I want to know about Denver,” Erin said first. “Are you two still friends?”

I chuckled in an “if you only knew” kind of way. “Yes, we're still friends, still roommates, traveling all over the country, telling Deborah's story. Tell her I didn't catch and release him!”

“And the mission,” Erin said. “What's it like now? Is it everything Deborah dreamed of?”

An unexpected flash of pleasure warmed my veins as I remembered our first trip to East Lancaster and the vision Deborah had.

I had pulled into the mission parking lot, wondering how quickly I'd be able to pull out again, but Deborah suddenly spoke in a tone that you learn to recognize when you've loved someone for years, a tone that says, “Hear me on this.”

“Ron, before we go in, I want to tell you something.” She leaned back against her headrest, closed her eyes. “I picture this place differently than it is now. White flowerboxes lining the streets, trees and yellow flowers. Lots of yellow flowers like the pastures at Rocky Top in June.”

Deborah opened her eyes and turned to me with an expectant smile “Can't you just see that? No vagrants, no trash in the gutters, just a beautiful place where these people can know that God loves them as much as He loves the people on the other side of that tunnel.”

I smiled, kissed my fingertips, and laid them against her cheek. “Yes, I can see that.” And I could. I just didn't mention that I thought she was getting a little ahead of herself.

As usual, I was wrong. When Deborah and I first visited, I told Erin, we entered a rundown building filled with good-hearted people like mission director Don Shisler and Chef Jim. People who faithfully ministered to the homeless, doing the hard work of rescuing lost souls, making do with what God had provided to that point. Chef Jim died of cancer before he could see the memorial chapel that bears Deborah's name, the new men's center, women's center, and free medical clinic.

The clinic has revolutionized care at the mission because it includes a mental-health division. As Denver mentioned earlier, Don estimates that up to 70 percent of homeless people suffer from varying degrees of mental-health issues. Before the clinic, the Union Gospel Mission lacked the capacity to offer these folks any meaningful on-site help. Now volunteer counselors and psychologists can intervene directly and also refer those with chronic mental conditions to agencies that can get them on the path to healing.

The clinic was spearheaded by Dr. Alan Davenport. Alan and his wife, Mary Ellen, were our closest family friends and, throughout Deborah's illness, our staunchest supporters.

“You probably remember reading about them in the book,” I said to Erin.

She said that she did. Then, like a reporter with a fast-approaching deadline, she popped her next question. “What about Sister Bettie? I just loved her in the book. How's she doing?”

I met Sister Bettie before I met Miss Debbie. She ain't no nun or nothin like that. We call her “Sister” 'cause she's a real spiritual woman . . . When she's talkin to you, she'll lay a hand on your arm like she's knowed you all your life, like maybe you was her own child . . .

Sister Bettie lives at the mission, but it ain't 'cause she don't have nowhere else to go. A long time ago, she lived in a regular neighborhood. But after her husband died, Sister Bettie felt the Lord tuggin on her heart, tellin her to spend the rest a' her life servin the homeless. She sold her home and everything she had except for a little bitty Toyota truck, and she asked the folks at the Union Gospel Mission could she set up housekeepin down there.

It didn't take long 'fore most a' the homeless folks in Fort Worth knowed Sister Bettie. She'd go to restaurants to ask em for their leftovers, and stores to ask em for socks and blankets and toothpaste and such . . . She never carried no purse with her, just whatever she had to give out that day and her Bible.

“Sister Bettie's perking along just as sweet as ever,” I told Erin. “She still calls me all the time. She still prays with me about Deborah.” Well along into her eighties, Sister Bettie still hauls her old bones out on the streets every week to love on some of the grubbiest people you will ever meet, smiling under her cloud of white hair, her blue eyes twinkling like sun on the sea.

Erin pressed on: “Did your kids get married?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“Who did they marry? Will Deborah know them when I tell her?”

Deborah would know Carson's wife, Megan, I said. Before she died, Deborah had hoped Carson would marry Megan and had given Carson a strand of pearls for his bride to wear on their wedding day.

As for Regan, Deborah always worried about her attraction to vagabond nonconformists and was sure Regan would wind up marrying some hippie snowboarder from Vail who wore his cap backward and worked in a T-shirt shop. Instead, I told Erin, Regan had followed in her mother's footsteps and married an investment banker. Except that Regan's pick, Matt Donnell, came from a West Texas ranching family instead of the smelly side of the tracks in Haltom City.

“Tell Deborah that Regan and Matt have two daughters,” I said to Erin. “Griffin is three, and Sadie Jane is a year old.”

“What about Carson and Megan? Do they have kids?”

My heart caught in my chest. “Yes, they have one child, a daughter.”

I flashed back to the day she was born. When I walked into the hospital room, Carson placed a tiny bundle in my arms. I looked down at her tiny featuresâeyes closed; lips a faint whisper of pink; sweet, round head covered with the barest breath of hair, like the soft surface of a peach.

“Dad,” Carson said, “welcome the newest Deborah Hall to the worldâKendall Deborah Hall.”

I stood there and cried and wished my wife could be the one to hold her namesake.

But now, at least, Erin could pass on the good news about all Deborah's granddaughters . . . and about the fulfillment of so many of her dreams. Dreams for our family, yes. Dreams for Denver and for the mission she cared so much about.

My wife had foreseen that Denver, a man the world would call foolish, would be wise enough to change a city, Fort Worthâand he did. She had predicted that Denver and I would be friendsâand we were. But not even Deborah could have foreseen all the amazing ways that God has used our experiences to change people's hearts toward the homeless across the country and around the world.

Wrapping up another miraculous phone call generated by Deborah's story, Erin said, “Is there anything else you want me to tell Deborah when I see her in heaven?”

“Yes,” I said. “Tell her Ronnie Ray says hello, that I miss her, and that I'll see her soon.”

About the Authors

R
ON HALL is an international art dealer whose long list of regular clients includes many celebrity personalities. An MBA graduate of Texas Christian University, he divides his time between Dallas and his Brazos River ranch near Fort Worth.

D
ENVER MOORE currently serves as a volunteer at the Fort Worth Union Gospel Mission. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

L
YNN VINCENT is the author or coauthor of seven books and a senior writer for
WORLD
magazine, where she covers politics, culture, and current events. She lives in San Diego, California.

It begins outside a burning plantation hut in Louisiana . . . and an East Texas honky-tonk . . . and, without a doubt, in the heart of God. It unfolds in a Hollywood hacienda . . . an upscale New York gallery . . . a downtown dumpster . . . a Texas ranch.

978-0-8499-0041-9

The true-life tale of two men and a remarkable woman, it's also a story about true lifeâgritty, down to earth, often wrenching, ultimately hopeful, always surprising.

It's a story you can believe in.

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