Everything happens for a reason – or does it?

by Carolyn Thomas     ♥    Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky) 

I’m inhaling a terrific book this week, page by page, line by line – and I’m enthusiastically recommending this funny, heartbreaking, important book to anybody who has ever faced a serious diagnosis (no matter the medical condition).  The author is Kate Bowler and this book is called “Everything Happens for a Reason – And Other Lies I’ve Loved.”   

Kate turns out to be the perfect person to write a book with that kind of in-your-face title. At the time, she was a professor at Duke University’s Divinity School, specializing in the study of what’s known as the Prosperity Gospel. This is a creed that sees our good fortune as a blessing from God, but sees misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. Kate now calls this creed “a branch of Christianity that promises a cure for tragedy.”     .

My regular readers will already guess by now what I personally think about this kind of Prosperity Gospel messaging, but here’s how Kate herself described her own experience while ironically living through her unique academic specialty in real time:

“At age 35, everything in my life seemed to point toward “blessing”. I was thriving in my job, married to my high school sweetheart, loving life with my newborn son, Zach.

“Then, I was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.”

Oh, my!  I did not see that coming when I opened her book.  Kate’s prognosis of her misdiagnosed metastatic colon cancer was truly grim. 

She wrote that the shocking prospect of her own mortality forced her to realize that she’d been living with the absolute conviction that she – unlike the rest of us – was somehow uniquely able to control all events of her life through sheer determination – including, apparently, incurable cancer. 

This belief, she now says, implies that if you succumb to illness or misfortune, you are clearly a failure. Such implications often include the unfortunate combat metaphors you’ve likely read in obituary notices which  start: “despite her brave battle with cancer…”  See also:  “Fighting, battling, and beating: combat metaphors in medicine are just wrong

I’ve learned that many cancer patients find combat metaphors hurtful because of the arrogant assumption that decrees“if only she had fought a little harder, if only she had a more positive attitude.”

Before Kate started her cancer treatment at Emory University, she recalled her certainty, plain and simple, that God had a worthy plan for her life in which every setback would also somehow be a step forward, adding:

“I believed that God would make a way for me. But I couldn’t stand that people might see through me, that they would know I was only another tired cancer patient with a creeping sense of hopelessness and the glorious delusion that sheer will-power would make the difference.”

“But my world of certainty had ended, and so many other people seemed to know why, as they offered platitudes like “God has a better plan!” or “This is a test and it will make you stronger!” 

In her book, however, she concludes: “I don’t believe that anymore.”

Kate Bowler was very sick, and no amount of positive thinking would shrink her tumors. 

In my experience, trite platitudes are what happen when people feel they must say something to an overwhelmed patient reeling from a frightening diagnosis – but what?  If you care about such a person in your life, it’s hard to come up with more useful advice on what NOT to say  to that special person than in Kate’s book – particularly the Appendix near the end of her book. This section is called:

“ABSOLUTELY NEVER SAY THIS TO PEOPLE EXPERIENCING TERRIBLE TIMES: A SHORT LIST”

Three examples to consider: Kate’s first bit of advice if you’re wondering if your words are going to help or hurt your person during terrible times: “Don’t ever say: “Well, at least.”  (Whoah. Hold up there. Were you about to make a comparison? At least it’s not  – what?  Stage 5 cancer? Do not minimize.”)

Her next advice: “Don’t say: “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.”) 

Or how about Kate’s wish to avoid ever again hearing: “Everything happens for a reason!” (The only thing worse than saying this, she adds, is pretending that you know the reason).

When her 2016 essay on dying “in a world where everything happens for a reason” was published on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Review, Kate (pictured left) learns that millions of people are reading her words, and thousands are sharing. Her in-box is suddenly filled with strangers (over 6,000 of them!) sending her reasons. Most want her to know, without a doubt, that there IS a hidden logic to her chaos. In this compelling book excerpt, for example, even when she is still hospitalized, one of her neighbours assures her husband Toban back at home that “everything happens for a reason.”

“I’d love to hear it!” replies Toban. 

“Pardon?” she says, startled. 

“The reason why my wife is dying,” he says (really, an instant conversation-stopper). 

Christians, Kate writes, want her to reassure them that her incurable colon cancer is all part of a plan. Some letters from New York Times readers even suggest that God’s plan was that Kate gets Stage IV colon cancer so she could help people by writing that New York Times article. 

 Yet not every reader arrives at this conclusion. As one woman writes to Kate, what if everything is just random?

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

Kate groups reactions to her writing as generally one of three life lessons (which she says can sometimes “feel worse than cancer itself”): 

1. The Minimizers:  these people believe that the significance of death is relative, and that heaven is after all her true home (a concept that Kate says makes her want to ask if they would like to go home first. Maybe now?
2. The Teachers:  these people believe that this experience is supposed to be an education in body, mind and spirit, as “Joe from Indiana” writes to Kate, hoping that she will have the good sense to accept God’s will. 
3. The Solutions People:  these insist on the hardest life lessons, already a little disappointed that Kate is not saving herself. “Keep smiling! Your attitude determines your destiny!” which Kate finds immediately exhausting due to what she calls “the tyranny of prescriptive joy”. 

I know lots about women’s unique heart problems, having survived a misdiagnosed widow-maker heart attack in 2008 (including two scary cardiac events during a 5-hour flight back to the west coast from Ottawa). Five months after my heart attack, I became the first Canadian ever accepted to attend the annual WomenHeart Science & Leadership patient advocacy training for women at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. I launched my blog Heart Sisters the following year, and then in 2015, I was approached by Johns Hopkins University Press about writing the book, “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease”  based on hundreds of my Heart Sisters articles. 

But I’m a rank amateur at being a breast cancer patient, having heard my own diagnosis of invasive ductal carcinoma aimed out loud in my direction barely six months ago. Ever since, I’ve been learning more about this horrible disease than I ever wanted to know. 

After over 17 years as a heart patient with ongoing cardiac symptoms, I truly believed that it would one day be the diagnosis mentioned  in my obituary some day as my cause of death. It very well might be – but so could getting hit by a bus tomorrow for all I know. 

Kate Bowler ends her book with a sentiment I briefly thought I’d invented myself:  

“The horror of cancer has made everything seem like it’s painted in bright colours. I think these same thoughts over and over again:  

“Life is so beautiful.”

“Life is so hard.”

Everything Happens for a Reason – And Other Lies I’ve Loved.  © Kate Bowler

♥

NOTE FROM CAROLYN:   In my book, “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease“ (Johns Hopkins University Press), I wrote much more about the profound stress of becoming a patient – no matter the diagnosis. You can ask for this book at your local library or bookshop (please support your favourite independent booksellers!)  or order it online (paperback, hardcover or e-book) at Amazon, or order it directly from Johns Hopkins University Press. Use their code HTWN to save 30% off the list price when you order.