Thread by @KatecBowler

So… I am not a believer that “everything happens for a reason.”

[Thread]

(Insert footage of me screaming at the TV every time the @BacheloretteABC whispers it on yacht to explain why two of the world’s most attractive humans miraculously end up together. It’s math, people. You signed waivers to be there & there were only 30 contestants.)

But I’d like to talk about the beautiful mail I receive that highlight what the phrase “everything happens for a reason” means to them. FOR EXAMPLE:

1. I hear from people who take “everything happens for a reason” to mean that they have found meaning in their joys. They met their soulmate at the laundromat who accidentally took their ticket. A married couple who sat next to each other in their kindergarten class photo.

...They relish in the experience of feeling something was “meant to be.” And I love that for them.

2. People take “everything happens for a reason” to mean that they have found purpose in their pain. A wife can’t leave the house because of her debilitating pain, and her husband writes to tell me that they have discovered the aspects of being human that have changed them.

... A man loses his leg but it saved his life, and now he will act with purpose about how to spend his remaining years. And I love that for them.

3. People say “everything happens for a reason” to feel noticed and loved by God. The God who counts the hairs on their heads. A mom gets a diagnosis and wants to know she is not abandoned by God. God weeps when she weeps, & she knows it because all this can’t be for nothing.

...And I want her to know that the details of her life are not ignored or irrelevant to God. She is loved, loved, loved.

Just because not EVERYTHING happens for a reason, doesn’t mean that “nothing happens for a reason.” But I would love us all to ask ourselves if finding “reasons” is a gift or a weapon. FOR EXAMPLE:

What I strongly object to is when people say “everything happens for a reason” as another way of saying “I know the reason this is happening to YOU.” This is an act of supreme hubris and fundamental cruelty. It allows people to take the position of God, all seeing, all knowing.

I know what it is like to have your life come apart completely only to see people stand back and use this as an opportunity to pronounce a verdict. I must have eaten the wrong thing. Been the wrong person. Failed the invisible test.

In my last @evrythnghappens podcast, @johngreen and I talked a lot about how hard it is experience life as “chronic” not “curable.” When you are “incurable” you become the example other people use to work out their own theologies.

No, suffering people are not the test case for you to decide what they “deserve.” If we show up with a little more compassion (and maybe a side dish), we can show God’s love in a way that a thousand half-baked explanations never will.