🎙️ Two Roads, Two Endings
Hey friend, welcome back to Running to Myself. I’m your host, Trisha Stanton. Today’s episode is a story about loss, about perseverance, and about the unexpected endings that come when you decide to hold on just a little longer.
It’s about a Firehouse Subs restaurant that my husband and I once owned. Yes—delicious sandwiches, but also a chapter of my life that nearly broke me in two. And in the breaking, it rebuilt my belief in what’s possible when you don’t quit too soon.
When you open a business, you have a dream. You imagine it will take off, that people will line up outside the doors, that all your sacrifice and investment will be worth it.
But the reality? The restaurant business is hard. Really hard. It took our restaurant seven years to become profitable. Seven.
And most of those years…we believed it wasn’t working. We believed we had failed. We believed we would eventually close the doors, declare bankruptcy, and move on with nothing but debt and disappointment to show for it.
I remember the apartment we lived in at that time—sparsely furnished, stripped bare because we had auctioned off our home, our land, and most of our possessions just months earlier. That loss had gutted me—financially, yes, but even more deeply emotionally. It was a grief I carried every day.
And now here we were, staring at another possible loss: the restaurant.
I’ll never forget sitting in our living room, talking about shutting the doors. On paper, it made sense. We were bleeding money. We were exhausted. Bankruptcy looked like the only logical option.
I felt almost nothing in that conversation. Numb. Except for a small, flickering relief—the relief of thinking, maybe this fight could finally be over.
And friend, that’s important to notice. Because when we’re exhausted, when the battle has gone on too long, sometimes even failure feels like relief.
We could have followed that path. And if we had, the story would have been written as a failure. We would have confirmed every fear and doubt we carried:
* We failed.
* It didn’t work.
* The restaurant business is too hard.
Those would have become the truths we lived with.
But then something happened.
I don’t know what shifted in my husband between that conversation and our planned trip to Indiana to visit family—but he didn’t follow through with the closing paperwork.
Instead, he decided: “Let’s give it just a little more time.”
And that one decision—that tiny act of staying—changed the entire outcome.
Slowly, things began to stabilize. The restaurant started paying its own bills. The panic and urgency began to fade. And then one day, it wasn’t just surviving. It was thriving.
Years later, we had a new conversation: it was time to sell. And even that process was long and difficult. But eventually, the right ending came. We sold the restaurant to our manager—the man who had poured his heart and soul into it, and who continues to thrive as the owner today.
Looking back, I am breathless at how close we came to missing that ending.
Because here’s the truth: It was never a choice between the right thing and the wrong thing. It was a choice between two endings.
If we had quit, that would have been the ending—failure.
Because we stayed, this was the ending—redemption.
Both were possible. And it came down to one decision at a fork in the road.
So let me ask you: Where in your life right now are you standing at a fork in the road?
Maybe it’s your marriage.
Maybe it’s a health journey.
Maybe it’s a dream you’ve carried for years but haven’t seen the fruit of yet.
You may be tempted to quit. And maybe quitting is the path you’ll choose—and if you do, it doesn’t make you weak or wrong. But know this: if you quit, you are choosing that ending. If you stay, you’re choosing the possibility of a different one.
So how do you know what to do when you’re standing at that crossroads? Here are five steps that help me, and that I believe can help you:
1. Pause Before You Decide
Don’t make big decisions from a place of exhaustion or fear. Take a breath. Step back. Sometimes the best thing you can do is give yourself time before choosing a path. That pause alone can change everything.
2. Zoom Out to the Bigger Story
Ask yourself: If I quit now, what story will I tell myself five years from now? If I stay, what story could still be possible?
Your choice isn’t about this moment—it’s about the ending you’ll one day tell.
3. Redefine Success
In those years of struggle, I kept measuring success by profit margins. But what if success, in that season, was simply staying in the game? Sometimes you have to redefine what “winning” looks like for right now.
4. Look for One Reason to Believe Again
You don’t need proof it will work. You just need one reason to believe it might. For us, it was simply the choice to give it “a little more time.” That was enough.
5. Walk in Faith, Not in Guarantees
There were no guarantees our restaurant would turn around. But walking in faith means choosing to believe that the ending isn’t written yet—and that the story may surprise you.
Friend, I don’t know what chapter you’re in right now. Maybe you’re in the part of the story where it feels like everything has failed. Maybe you’re sitting in your own sparsely furnished “apartment moment,” wondering if it’s time to quit.
And maybe—just maybe—this episode is your reminder that the ending isn’t written yet.
It’s not about the right or wrong choice. It’s about which ending you want to live with.
Our restaurant story could have ended in bankruptcy. And that would have been okay. But I’m so thankful it ended with redemption, joy, and the unexpected gift of handing it over to the right person.
So I’ll leave you with this question:
What ending do you want to create?
Because the decision you make today will shape the story you tell tomorrow. Thanks for joining me today on Running to Myself. If this episode resonated with you, I’d love for you to share it with a friend who might need to hear the same reminder. Until next time, keep running toward the life you were created to live and remember, mindset matters.
