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

by Kate Bowler

Live unburdened. Live free. Live without forevers that don’t always come. These are my best hopes for you, that you press forward at last. I don’t know how to die, but I know how to press this crushing grief into hope, hope for them. It doesn’t sound much like goodbye. It sounds more like this: Fare thee well, my loves.

I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love. A brutal world demands capitulation to what seems impossible—separation. Brokenness. An end without an ending. It

“I guess I was hoping that God would make something of this. But it has come to nothing.”

“I find it comforting to believe the universe is random, because then the God I believe in is no longer cruel.”