31. Christian Beliefs I’ve Moved Away From - Belief 5

Belief: That everything happens for a reason.

I don’t know if this is specifically a “Christian” belief or just a common cliche. But regardless, I think it has contributed to damaging, unhelpful internalized beliefs for those who put their faith in God.

“Everything happens for a reason.” In the worst of cases, we might hear this phrase espoused to a grieving family, or a parent of a child caught in addiction, or a person who has been diagnosed with cancer. Everything happens for a reason. The good die young. That person was too good for this earth. God needed another angel. We’ve all heard these damaging, untrue, and unhelpful cliches.

I also have thought this phrase when going through difficult times of my own. Not in the form of tragic losses or illness, but at times when I’ve struggled with anxiety, depression, uncertainty, loneliness, or heartbreak. I’ve sometimes thought that I “needed” to go through this in order to learn a valuable lesson. Or that God somehow “orchestrated” this challenge to keep me “dependent” on God, or to remind me of my need for God. Or that God chose not to take my pain away because I hadn’t grown enough yet or learned enough yet.

Sometimes, I think telling ourselves these stories can be a way we make sense of our pain. It can help us feel more in control. We can have someone to blame - often ourselves - when things aren’t going right. We can say “Well, I just need to keep working on X, Y, and Z for things to get better/so God will take my pain away.” I get this. When I first started believing that God didn’t actually orchestrate these challenges for me and they were instead just part of life, I actually got angrier and more frustrated when they happened because it felt so out of my control. When I believed that God was waiting on me to make a change, I could always keep trying. There was always more I could do. When I accept that a situation is out of my control and I just have to ride the waves and be patient, it can be so much scarier.

But I can also have much more compassion for myself. Just recently, I was waiting on an email from someone. I had reached out for help (something I am not always good at) and had been waiting for a while on a response. The longer I waited, the more my brain had time to make up stories (“This is why vulnerability is dangerous” “You’re going to be rejected”). I talked to my husband about the stories my brain was making up. He (unhelpfully) said, “Maybe this is God’s way of helping you work through your struggle with vulnerability.” He had no idea how damaging this well-meaning phrase can be when internalized, and thankfully we were able to talk it through and come to a more helpful place. But, imagining that God somehow orchestrated that the person I emailed would take a while to get back to me, was a twisted and masochistic way of thinking about God. It was basically saying that God was forcing me to wait and suffer so I could learn a lesson, instead of acknowledging that this was just normal life stuff and sometimes things don’t go exactly the way I want them to. And that’s okay. It happens. It isn’t always a “lesson.”

In this situation, it certainly was an invitation for me to be aware of the untrue beliefs my brain was inventing while I waited on a response. It was an invitation to practice my resilience and coping with anxiety about the unknown. It was an invitation to practice self-compassion by reminding myself that I was proud of myself for reaching out in the first place and asking for what I needed, and the courage this had taken. But it wasn’t something that was orchestrated by God to teach me a lesson. It wasn’t a message from God saying, “Hey kid, I’m going to make you wait on this response because you still haven’t gotten it right yet so I’m going to make you practice even more.” In reality, this was an invitation for me to see how much I had grown, because although it was challenging for me to have to wait on this response, I did not spiral and break down and ruminate like I may have done in the past. Sure, I spiraled and ruminated some, but not as much as I might have before. I was able to replace my unhelpful thoughts with better, truer ones. This was an opportunity for me to be proud of myself and my growth.

In fact, every day is an opportunity to learn something new. Every day is an opportunity to practice growth. And God is with us every step of the way, cheering us on and loving us and being proud of us for making the rich and joyful lives that we were created to live. God doesn’t need to use moments when we’re already feeling weak and vulnerable to force us to grow. God is simply beside us in those moments, offering comfort and love while we naturally grow in resilience.

“It’s time to kill the idea that we can only grow and heal in moments when we’re uncomfortable. You heal every time you have a good conversation with someone. You heal every time you laugh. You heal every time something makes you smile genuinely. You heal every time you have fun creating something - anything. You heal every time you get so absorbed in something fun that you forget your struggles for a while. There is, in fact, lots of healing and growth to be found INSIDE your comfort zone.”

Original credit: compassionatereminders - Reddit; Found on: @writers - Instagram