Elephants and Tea - March 2022 - 28

Frustration in Faith HARD TRUTHS
Stop Telling Me Everything
Happens for a Reason
BY MARA THRASHER
" E
28
verything happens for a reason, "
the well-meaning cashier tells me.
Before October, I would have
believed her. I thought that tragedy
was all part of God's bigger
picture, and that we were all just
pawns in the game of life, and
bad events just give someone a
stronger testimony.
Then it happened to me. I was
twenty-one years old looking at
a life-changing diagnosis. People assured
me that having cancer would make me a
better nurse, and maybe it did, but at what
cost? Constant obsession over my clavicles
and spiraling when something feels slightly
different? Starting mammograms in my 20s
after having radiation to my chest to kill off
the " gift " God had specially chosen for me?
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The costs of cancer far outweigh the " reasons "
behind the " everything " the cashier
had told me about.
On the day of my diagnosis, my dad
refused to let me say the word " cancer. "
Instead, he made my whole family call it
" the affliction. " Looking back, that word
was perfect. I was basically cursed by a
combination of God and bad statistics. At
first, I was optimistic. I felt blessed to be
given a good cancer (insert eyeroll here). I
was going to kick cancer's butt and make
it look easy. I posted an inspirational Instagram
post about how it was all going to
be fine. It was not fine. Not only did I get
the bad luck of having cancer, I then faced
complication after complication. From
blood clots to rare drug allergies, I was
miserable. The next treatments were hell on
earth. I was not kicking cancer's butt like I
had planned. Cancer was kicking my butt,
and it was all I could do to stay afloat. All
of it was so messed up; I could not make
sense of anything that had happened to me.
How could God have picked me out of
everyone to give cancer to? Then how did he
pick me to survive? Every part of it is unfair
in so many ways. It felt like the loving, caring
God that I grew up learning about was
everything but that. Did he pick a random
number and end up picking me as the target?
Then did he flip a coin with ten sides to
represent the chances of me relapsing? The
statistics of it all are so mind-boggling. How
did I get a cancer that only occurs in 2.6
people in 100,000 and then expect to beat
the relapse odds that are so much worse?
Why did he even create cancer and suffer
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Elephants and Tea - March 2022

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