Everything does not happen for a reason

By Kacy Nash

Everything happens for a reason – I have never really been a fan of that phrase. Even though it comes from kind people with good intentions, it’s a desperate attempt of comfort when all other words fail.

The phrase, though well-intended, has never given me much comfort. I think it gives suffering more power than it deserves – as if there must be purpose in the pain we are suffering. When we are in middle of tragedy or crisis that idea only adds to our suffering by forcing us to search for a reason for such profound distress.

It’s normal to try and find the why in each suffering. It distracts us emotionally, but it also cheats us out of the full measure of grief and outrage. Maybe there is no why, no grand scheme and it really is just something that sucks. Sometimes we must allow ourselves to simply and fully acknowledge the profound suckiness of it all.

I lost my brother the summer before my freshman year in college. In an attempt to comfort — well-meaning friends offered, “Everything happens for a reason” and “God has a plan.” While I was so thankful to have those people surrounding me and lifting me up, their words were honestly most frustrating to me — leaving comfort beyond my grasp.

I think to blindly believe that everything happens for a reason paints the wrong picture of God. Deep within the core of my faith there is a buried, fiercely-protected trust in a God who is good and loves His creation, and He weeps with us in our times of extreme darkness. He does not cause our suffering just to toughen us up or break us down. While I believe that beauty can rise from the ashes (and when it does, it is of God), it was never God’s plan for His children to suffer. The agonies of this world are a result of evil.

The most difficult thing I’ve had to do was to endure the pain and bitterness that settled in my heart after Kyle passed away suddenly at 27. I do not think it was God’s plan for Kyle to die. I think it is just something that happened, and I firmly believe that God is bleeding along with me. He sits with me in my agony and weeps along side of me on my mourning bench. He didn’t cause my pain but is instead providing a holy presence and comfort in it.

Losing someone you love is a unique pain that is unbearable without God. Being a Christian doesn’t change what you deal with – it changes how you deal with it. I have learned some very important lessons in my moments of devastation and sorrow. No I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. Bad things just happen because we live in an imperfect world. But there is meaning in how we respond to all the things that happen to each of us, even when they are awful things. And God is at work in all of them.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” -Romans 8:28.

Kacy Nash is a sophomore at Oklahoma Christian University.