Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

by Kate Bowler

And I did discover that the prosperity gospel encourages people (especially its leaders) to buy private jets and multimillion-dollar homes as evidence of God’s love. But I also saw the desire for escape. Believers wanted an escape from poverty, failing health, and the feeling that their lives were leaky buckets. Some people wanted Bentleys but more wanted relief from the wounds of their past and the pain of their present. People wanted salvation from bleak medical diagnoses; they wanted to see God rescue their broken teenagers or their misfiring marriages. They wanted talismans to ward off the things that go bump in the night. They wanted a modicum of power over the things that ripped their lives apart at the seams.

Every day I prayed the same prayer: God, save me. Save me. Save me. Oh, God, remember my baby boy. Remember my son and my husband before you return me to ashes. Before they walk this earth alone. I plead with a God of Maybe, who may or may not let me collect more years. It is a God I love, and a God that breaks my heart. Anyone who has lived in the aftermath of something like this knows that it signifies the arrival of three questions so simple that they seem, in turn, too shallow and too deep. Why? God, are you here? What does this suffering mean?

But then it was drowned out by what I’ve now heard a thousand times. “Everything happens for a reason” or “God is writing a better story.” Apparently God is also busy going around closing doors and opening windows. He can’t get enough of that.

I became certain that when I died some beautiful moron would tell my husband that “God needed an angel,” because God is sadistic like that.

I wish this were a different kind of story. But this is a book about befores and afters and how people in the midst of pain make up their minds about the eternal questions: Why? Why is this happening to me? What could I have done differently? Does everything actually happen for a reason? If I accept that what is happening is something I cannot change, can I learn how to let go?

Fairness is one of the most compelling claims of the American Dream, a vision of success propelled by hard work, determination, and maybe the occasional pair of bootstraps.

is the language of entitlements. It is the careful math of deserving, meted out as painstakingly as my sister and I used to inventory and trade our Halloween candy. In this world, I deserve what I get. I earn my keep and keep my share. In a world of fair, nothing clung to can ever slip away.

In a spiritual world in which healing is a divine right, illness is a symptom of unconfessed sin—a symptom of a lack of forgiveness, unfaithfulness, unexamined attitudes, or careless words. A

What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, “You are limitless”? Everything is not possible. The mighty Kingdom of God is not yet here. What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed? What if being people of “the gospel” meant that we are simply people with good news? God is here. We are loved. It is enough.

The first indication I have that it has been two days since my diagnosis is that the church is keeping vigil. This will turn out to be one of the great advantages of working at Duke Divinity School—all my friends are pastors.

They are teaching me the first lesson of my new cancer life—the first thing to go is pride. —

buddy,” I apparently say to him, “of course you’re here…that is so nice….And you look soooooo skinny.” It is the first of many things I tell people when I am on drugs, because Drugged Kate has a lot of feelings and opinions about how people should live their lives. Mostly I try to tell my friends and family how much they mean to me but end up saying that and more.

another,” he replies. “Huh.” He is right. With age we slowly lose our senses and even our pleasures, our parents and then our friends, preparing us for our own absence. An interesting thought.

Control is a drug, and we are all hooked, whether or not we believe in the prosperity gospel’s assurance that we can master the future with our words and attitudes.

“Hi, this is a call from the cancer clinic. We got your results back. The doctor said to tell you that you have the magic cancer, and that you’d know what that meant.” I freeze. And then I play it again. And then one more time. I start to yell. “I have the magic cancer! I have the magic cancer!” Toban comes running out of the house, and I sink into his arms, crying. We are both trying to smile with that weary look of people overwhelmed by the prospect of hope. “I might have a chance,” I manage to say between sobs. “I might have a chance.” He hugs me tightly, resting his chin on my head. And then he releases me to let me sing “Eye of the Tiger” and do a lot of punching the air, because it is in my nature to do so. The magic

“Don’t worry,” says my dad, putting down his book. “Your mother and I have $140,000 in liquid assets.” I will only find out later that my family have all appraised their homes and savings plans—every last one of them—to see what they can cobble together to save my life. My best shot at survival will bankrupt my family. But

“I have known Christ in so many good times,” she said, sincerely and directly. “And now I will know Him better in His sufferings.” She meant it. And I could not imagine a world in which I could mean it. It was Christmas, and I was busy with presents, coffee dates, and rushing

Everyone knew that Kate had cancer and that for her it was basically a special pass to understand the life and times of Jimmy Carter. People had something to ask about and to point to that was sweet and funny. No one had to lead with “Soooo…you have cancer.” Instead, it was always “So, how’s Jimmy?” I couldn’t stand that people might see through me—that they might know I was only another tired cancer patient with a creeping sense of hopelessness and the glorious delusion that sheer willpower would make the difference.

And then, in a flurry, I shoot it off to The New York Times, not thinking too much about whether it’s any good, but sending it because I have been infected by the urgency of death. Then an editor there sees it, and puts it on the front page of the Sunday Review. Millions of people read it. Thousands share it and start writing to me. And most begin with the same words. “I’m afraid.” Me too, me too. “I’m afraid of the loss of my parents,” writes a young man. “I know I will lose them someday soon, and I can’t bear the thought.” “I’m afraid for my son,” says a father from Arkansas. “He has been diagnosed with a brain tumor at forty-four, which would have been devastating enough if he had not already lost his identical twin brother to the same disease a few years ago.” These letters sing with unspeakable love in the face of the Great Separation. Don’t go, don’t go, you anchor my life.

There is plenty of denial, and plenty of the deals people attempt to broker with God. “I am an atheist, but I put it aside, and I begged God to take the cancer away from my son and to put it into me.” I read that letter to my father, who is sitting in an overstuffed leather chair in my living room holding his Kindle two inches from his glasses. “Oh, I’ve prayed that a hundred times. ‘Please, God, why not just take me?’ ” he says a little wistfully. I scoot over beside him and rest my head on his knee. “Dad, that is about the kindest, saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” There is a gentle silence between us as I imagine that we are both thinking about how much we love each other before my dad begins to speak. “But then I remember that God didn’t spare Mozart at your age…so…” He is making a gesture that suggests he is weighing a heavy object in each hand. “So, you know.” I start to laugh. “What did he die of?” “The plague, I think.” “Oh, geez.” “Yeah. And God loves you at least as much as Mozart.” “Let’s go back to loving each other in silence.”

fronds. In Christian art, a palm frond is a symbol of martyrdom, a little reminder to the viewer that this saint has earned his or her status in blood. But at every Palm Sunday service, the only whiff of martyrdom is the sense that every child is about three seconds from getting a palm frond in the eyeball. A tired volunteer still manages a smile and hands one to my two-year-old, who is delighted.

Even when I was still in the hospital, a neighbor came to the door and told my husband that everything happens for a reason. “I’d love to hear it,” he replied. “Pardon?” she said, startled. “The reason my wife is dying,” he said in that sweet and sour way he has, effectively ending the conversation as the neighbor stammered something and handed him a casserole.

— THESE ARE THE THREE life lessons people try to teach me that, frankly, sometimes feel worse than cancer itself. The first is that I shouldn’t be so upset, because the significance of death is relative. I like to call the people with that message the Minimizers.

The second lesson comes from the Teachers, who focus on how this experience is supposed to be an education in mind, body, and spirit. “I

have taken up cursing for Lent, the forty-day stretch before Easter in which those who want to understand Jesus’ sacrifice choose one of their own. They promise to abandon vices, take up new spiritual practices, or simply give up chocolate like every fourteen-year-old girl I knew at St. Mary’s Academy, who combined their sympathy with Jesus at his grisly crucifixion with a spring break weight-loss program. As adults, most do-gooders I know give up alcohol or spend more time in prayer. I’ve started swearing. And I mean it. I swear about cancer. I swear about dry croissants and coffee that cools too quickly. I swear about the budding ulcers in my mouth from intense chemotherapy. I swear about the refugee crisis in Europe. I swear before and after I receive test results even though I’m tremendously relieved that, so far, the tumors are still shrinking. I swear about Curious George whining to the Man in the Yellow Hat. I am relentless. Last week I cursed at my mother-in-law in what I imagine was the halfway mark of her complaining about her wrinkles and her droopy parts. “I think aging is a fucking privilege,” I say squarely.

Easter has poured itself out, and now we members of the church are stumbling through what the church calendar calls “Ordinary Time,” the second installment of the phase traditionally beginning with Epiphany in early January and ending with Ash Wednesday. Ordinary Time picks up again after the mysteries of Easter and Jesus’ ascension into heaven have passed, and stretches out to swallow the rest of the year. It is the space between. It is a time for baptisms and weddings, teaching and preaching without the highs and lows of Jesus’ cosmic interventions. Church attendance flags. There is no birth at the manger or death on the cross, just the ponderous pace of people singing, praying, and keeping their kids quiet during the sermon. The magic fades and reveals the church for what it is: a plain people in a boring building who meet until kickoff.

I AM SITTING ACROSS from the man who won a huge prize for his discovery of my particular form of cancer, the cell disorder that caused these tumors to bloom. For all his many efforts, his thousands of hours in the lab, I have brought him cupcakes. With sprinkles.

surviving. “I think you meant that we just can’t know. And that our brains fill in all the details, for good or for ill. We want to tell ourselves a story—any story—so we can get back to certainty,” I reply. “You know me! I am so desperate to know what’s going to happen. At least so I can prepare.” “I sound really deep,” he says. “I just need to make it to fifty. I need to make sure that kid is launched. I need to get most of my life done. I need to lock it down.” “But it comes undone. There are so many times in life when we think we have it locked down,” he says. We are quiet again. Plans are made. Plans come apart. New delights or tragedies pop up in their place. And nothing human or divine will map out this life, this life that has been more painful than I could have imagined. More beautiful than I could have imagined. “Right. That’s the secret—don’t skip to the end,” I remind myself, sheepishly wiping my face on the sleeve of my sweater.

ABSOLUTELY NEVER SAY THIS TO PEOPLE EXPERIENCING TERRIBLE TIMES: A SHORT LIST 1. “Well, at least…” Whoa. Hold up there. Were you about to make a comparison? At least it’s not…what? Stage V cancer? Don’t minimize. 2. “In my long life, I’ve learned that…” Geez. Do you want a medal? I get it! You lived forever. Well, some people are worried that they won’t, or that things are so hard they won’t want to. So ease up on the life lessons. Life is a privilege, not a reward. 3. “It’s going to get better. I promise.” Well, fairy godmother, that’s going to be a tough row to hoe when things go badly. 4. “God needed an angel.” This one takes the cake because (a) it makes God look sadistic and needy and (b) angels are, according to Christian tradition, created from scratch. Not dead people looking for a cameo in Ghost. You see how confusing it is when we just pretend that the deceased return to help you find your car keys or make pottery? 5. “Everything happens for a reason.” The only thing worse than saying this is pretending that you know the reason. I’ve had hundreds of people tell me the reason