Everything Happens For A Reason

Everything happens for a reason. 

This, the most common of platitudes, is one that I have heard, and cringed at, a hundred times since Peyton died. Everything happens for a reason is a perfectly acceptable phrase to use when consoling a friend through the loss of a job i.e., losing this job will lead you to the next even better job; or through a tough break up i.e., no longer being with him will open you to the opportunity of meeting the next even better guy etc. etc. There is however, no reason so great, that it would justify the pain of watching your child suffer through chemotherapy, or the unrelenting grief that comes with watching her slip from this world to the next.

Today, while en route to a doctor's appointment, I sat stopped at a red light blocking me from making a left onto a main street. My light changed to green and I started to move forward, but luckily, out of the corner of my eye, sensed a car hurling toward me at far too fast a rate of speed to be someone who intended to stop at the red light before them. My reflexes engaged, I felt my foot hit the break, and watched in utter disbelief as this idiot woman screamed through my pathway, oblivious to the fact that she had just nearly caused a major accident.

 In that moment, sitting behind the wheel, heart pounding and thanking God for my reflexes, I realized that everything doesn't happen for a reason... sometimes things just happen. Had this woman hit me, she would have seriously hurt me or worse at the speed she was travelling, and there would have been no great meaning behind it... it just would have been. 

I have spent the last eight months trying to figure out why Leukemia chose to break our hearts. Why this happened to Peyton, to me, to us - and the reality is that there is just no reason. Life, for better or for worse, and without much concern or thought for those that it affects, just happens.