Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

Bowler tells of spending three months in excruciating pain, periodically bending over, holding her stomach, and propping herself against the wall in terrible abdominal agony. She describes being in the gastroenterologist’s office when he tells her he’s not sure of the diagnosis. It might or might not be her gallbladder. She refuses to leave his office until he prescribes a test that might determine the source of her pain.

As Bowler sits behind her desk in her office, a staffer from the doctor’s calls to tell her that she has cancer and must come to the hospital immediately. Bowler goes into a sort of autopilot in which she contacts her husband Toban, then her parents, her sisters, and her friends. She goes to the hospital wearing one of her favorite dresses, and tells her friends who come to see her that they must burn her dress. She does not want to see the dress again because it is a symbol that her life has changed and will never be the same.

In a conversation with her parents, Bowler’s mother offhandedly remarks that she wants Bowler to will the baby Zach to them. Kate reminds her that Toban is perfectly all right and he will be able to take care of his son. Her mother apologizes: “Right... right... I'm sorry. Oh, honey, I'm sorry” (10). A number of individuals react to the news of her cancer by immediately coming to her while she sits on the hospital bed, getting ready for emergency surgery.

Questions of a theological nature emerge for Bowler. In particular, people around her ask if God is fair, a question she often heard people ask in other contexts. She tells the story of the Copelands, two famous televangelists who go out on their front porch the night of a tornado and pray it away from their community.

Bowler relates that, once before, she had a mysterious physical problem that made her feel that her body deserted her. This ailment conflicted with the tenets of the prosperity gospel. While she was working on her 300-page doctoral dissertation, a point arrived when she lost strength in her arms. She ended up going to 35 different doctors, none of whom were able to diagnose the condition accurately. Sometimes she had to wear both arms in slings, making the simplest tasks physically impossible.

She relays how she attended the prosperity congregation that was her home church. At first, congregants were sympathetic. Then they began to wonder why she wasn’t being healed. When she would go to prosperity churches, members wanted to take her onto the chancel steps so their preacher could heal her. Some congregants wanted to turn her over to women’s groups to lay hands on her and pray. Some wanted to take her into private little rooms and allow her to confess her sins. Prosperity people were sure there was some reason she was not being healed. In the prosperity Gospel, there is no conception of unmerited personal tragedy. All pain is deserved in some respect.

The last doctor Bowler saw, number 36, tells her definitively that she has a psychosomatic illness and wants to send her for psychological help. She writes, “he jotted down in my file that I required psychological assistance period now no one would take my physical condition seriously” (23). Distressed, Bowler bolts from his office and calls her friend Chelsea to commiserate. In the midst of dealing with this crisis, as she considers surgery that might restore strength to her arms, she discovers she is pregnant, a long-desired goal for herself and Toban. Initially, they are thrilled. Later that evening, Bowler miscarries.

Bowler relates an occasion when she and her friend Blair went to a magic show where the opening act failed, leaving the two of them laughing about the mini-disaster on stage. She writes: “In the study of religion, we use the word magic sparingly because, so often, it is employed as a cheap way of describing faiths whose supernatural forces we simply don't credit” (31).

Bowler describes what happens when the prosperity gospel does not work as touted, and returns to the search to find relief for her weak arms. Bowler resorts to many different treatments and is ready to have surgery to remove two ribs. She then hears of a physical therapist who practices an odd therapeutic protocol. Though these treatments start disappointingly, they end up working. Bowler finds her strength restored.

Bowler lists many positive occurrences that follow in the wake of these treatments. She records her first audiobook courtesy of the publisher. She wins a teaching position at a major seminary. The women in the small prosperity gospel church that she attends embrace her, saying that things now are really going her way. She ends the chapter with the description of a young man who was inseparable from a friend, who suddenly died. Because the young man and his group of prosperity friends could not believe God would let this happen, they sat around the casket praying for a full day and night. They assumed God could and would raise the deceased from the dead like Lazarus. It did not happen.