When bad things happen to good people, one of the common things to say, (especially among those of the Christian faith), is that everything happens for a reason. After all, would a benevolent and loving God let his people suffer as they do? The straightforward answer is “no”, but in light of the atrocities that do happen to God’s children, the next most reasonable explanation is that God allows these things to happen because they are a part of a divine process, that they were destined to happen because that’s what God desired. While in the moment, they claim, one may  feel miserable and betrayed by God, the victim must accept that this is all part of the Master Plan. For many, this brings comfort. “The Big Man knows what he’s doing!”. However,  some pose a further question : “How in the hell is this part of God’s plan?”  I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason.

As someone who went to a religious private school for most of their elementary years, I have been exposed to many wonderful aspects of religion, but also many unfortunate side effects.  My story takes place in 7th grade, my last year at the school. It was a tough year in general, but one of the harder parts was when my teacher miscarried. You see, our class was very close to our teacher, whose name I won’t include here for privacy reasons. We had been looking forward to the baby for months, we even knew what she was going to name her.

After months of our teacher’s belly gradually swelling, and joking about how the teacher would change the baby’s name to one of our names, our teacher went missing one day. It had been about eight months since she had been pregnant, so we were all anticipating the announcement that her baby had been born. It was the morning, and we were busying ourselves with the daily morning assignments, and then an announcement came over the loudspeaker.

Our principal said, in a somber tone : “Saints,” (this is what he usually called us, sometimes to my irritation), “Please come to the library for a meeting. Thank you.” The class went quiet, and the substitute teacher told us to line up at the door. Along with the whole school, we marched to the library, and stood there, waiting for the principal to speak. He was using a table as a podium, and there were tears on his cheeks. At that moment I imagined a simultaneous thought going through everyone’s mind. “Tell us what happened.”

The principal told us what we had expected. Our teacher’s baby was dead. We all went back to class after a 10 minute long prayer, and sat in silence. Some of our classmates cried. Most of them just stared. A few tried to start conversations, but were beaten down by the thick silence that death had created within the room. But, God had a plan! He knew what he was doing.

Through this experience, I learned two very important lessons. Firstly, not everything happens for a “reason”. And secondly, to overcome grief without having to look for the purpose of the tragedy. I didn’t need to know it was going to be okay because it was part of some plan, I could just accept that it was a bad thing that happened, and that bad things happen. This essay isn’t about theology, I myself am not even any kind of theist. This essay is about accepting things for what they are.