I think of all of the cliches that I've heard since Gabriel's passing this one bothers me the most "Everything happens for a reason!" Really?!?! So if someone makes a terrible choice and decides to rob a store and shoot the clerk there is a reason that happened? In that case I believe it's just free will playing itself out and the clerk and clerk's family are paying the price of someone's bad choices. God gave us free will and he didn't cause the person to shoot the clerk. Now, can God take that horrible situation and bring some good out of it...yes, I do believe that, but I think that the clerk didn't HAVE to die in order for God to work in their lives. I believe that He just uses the circumstances that we are in, but I don't believe that He CREATES the circumstances in order to use them as teaching lessons.
So bad things happen sometimes right? Well, I can accept the idea of being a victim of free will...if I lost Gabriel in a car accident because I was hit by a drunk driver for example...someone made a bad choice and we were the victims. I would be angry and the pain wouldn't be any less etc., but it would be easier to understand how it could happen and why it happened. I do struggle with the "bad things" that have no human origin (that we know of anyway). I struggle even more with the concept that we had some sort of grand lesson to learn from this experience (Everything happens for a reason) and that we could not have learned it in any other possible way. I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that God could be as cruel as to teach us a lesson in this way or that Gabriel HAD to die in order for something else to happen or for Tom and I to learn something.
Now, back to the crappy things...how much control does God actually have over the things that happen? We say that God is all powerful, but is He?!?! We now know that Gabriel did not have a heartbeat probably for at least a day or more prior to finding out that day at the hospital...now as we prayed on our way to the hospital was God unable to change the outcome because although we didn't know the outcome at that point he was in fact already gone. Were our prayers in vain or could God have brought him back to life in my womb? He is all powerful right? If He is and He could, then why didn't He? Did we not pray hard enough? I will argue that this isn't the case, but He does save some babies and not others? We prayed through this whole pregnancy and I still lost Gabriel, yet some people who don't even believe in God have multiple children and don't care for them...so it can't be a matter of prayer or faithfulness in God. In this case it's also not a matter of free will...no one's bad decision caused this to happen (other than the very weak argument that Adam and Eve brought sin/evil into the world). I think that others in similar situations have this same sort of questioning...so someone said that "Everything happens for a reason" to make themselves feel better to make them feel as if their pain helps a bigger cause. They want to say that this crappy thing that happened has a larger meaning..we just need to spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out what this "reason" is and maybe only God knows what this grand "reason" is.
I just feel like accepting this explanation is saying that God HAD to take Gabriel to teach us a lesson because we just couldn't get it any other way. I think that this just sounds so cruel and that my faith in God must be so weak that He couldn't speak to me in any other way...this explanation does not make me want to seek out God more...it makes me angrier at Him for causing so much pain in my life.
I don't accept this cliche as answer, but at the same time I don't have any answers of my own. All I know is that I lost a part of myself when Gabriel died and that hole in my heart isn't going to get smaller no matter what the answers are...He is still gone and I still miss him terribly.
I'm on the other side of the fence as far as belief in the supernatural, but I agree with you completely. The world is a very complex, constantly changing place. Things happen, and some are good, some are bad. Most fall in the middle somewhere as people on one side benefit and people on another side do not.
ReplyDeleteAll you can do is lean on your friends and family in a difficult time. Things do happen for a reason, but sometimes that reason is just that nature sucks and can be extremely cruel. No one ever promised that life would be fair or easy, but we do have people and resources that can make it easier.
A columnist that I follow had this advice to give when one of his readers asked how to move on after her fiancee had been taken from her just a couple weeks before their wedding (paraphrased):
Grief is the price we pay for love. If we do not love someone very strongly, then we do not feel much grief when they are taken from us. This does not mean that we should not love fiercely, but we should know that time is short and precious and we will eventually all have to deal with great sorrow from that love. It also reminds us that we can love again, in different ways.
I hope these words find you some comfort, and that you allow yourself to grieve and move on when you are ready. It takes a very long time, and you will never be completely healed. But that is OK, as that means you still love him.
P.S. The people telling you that "things happen for a reason" have no idea the pain that those word cause. They are trying to comfort you without realizing how much the cliche hurts to hear. Try to thank them for their support and love, and understand that they just don't have the right words. In such a difficult time, almost no one does :(