"Everything happens for a reason" -- and other lies I've loved

In life's toughest moments, how do you go on living? Kate Bowler has been exploring this question ever since she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35. In a profound, heartbreaking and unexpectedly funny talk, she offers some answers -- challenging the idea that "everything happens for a reason" and sharing hard-won wisdom about how to make sense of the world after your life is suddenly, completely changed. "I believe that in the darkness, even there, there will be beauty and there will be love," she says.

There is some medical news
that nobody, absolutely nobody,

is prepared to hear.

I certainly wasn't.

It was three years ago
that I got a call in my office

with the test results of a recent scan.

I was 35 and finally living
the life I wanted.

I married my high school sweetheart

and had finally gotten pregnant
after years of infertility.

And then suddenly we had a Zach,

a perfect one-year-old boy/dinosaur,

depending on his mood.

And having a Zach suited me perfectly.

I had gotten the first job
I applied for in academia,

land of a thousand crushed dreams.

And there I was,

working at my dream job

with my little baby

and the man I had imported from Canada.

(Laughter)

But a few months before,
I'd started feeling pain in my stomach

and had gone to every expert
to find out why.

No one could tell me.

And then, out of the blue,

some physician's assistant
called me at work

to tell me that I had stage IV cancer,

and that I was going to need
to come to the hospital right away.

And all I could think of to say was,

"But I have a son.

I can't end.

This world can't end.

It has just begun."

And then I called my husband,
and he rushed to find me

and I said all the true things
that I have known.

I said, "I have loved you forever,

I have loved you forever.

I am so sorry.

Please take care of our son."

And then as I began
the walk to the hospital,

it crossed my mind for the first time,

"Oh. How ironic."

I had just written
a book called "Blessed."

(Laughter)

I am a historian

and an expert in the idea
that good things happen to good people.

I research a form of Christianity
nicknamed "the prosperity gospel,"

for its very bold promise
that God wants you to prosper.

I never considered myself
a follower of the prosperity gospel.

I was simply an observer.

The prosperity gospel believes
that God wants to reward you

if you have the right kind of faith.

If you're good and faithful,

God will give you health and wealth

and boundless happiness.

Life is like a boomerang:

if you're good,

good things will always come back to you.

Think positively. Speak positively.

Nothing is impossible if you believe.

I got interested in this
very American theology

when I was 18 or so,

and by 25 I was traveling the country
interviewing its celebrities.

I spent a decade talking to televangelists

with spiritual guarantees
for divine money.

I interviewed countless megachurch pastors
with spectacular hair

about how they live their best lives now.

I visited with people
in hospital waiting rooms

and plush offices.

I held hands with people in wheelchairs,

praying to be cured.

I earned my reputation
as destroyer of family vacations

for always insisting on being dropped off
at the fanciest megachurch in town.

If there was a river
running through the sanctuary,

an eagle flying freely in the auditorium,

or an enormous spinning golden globe,

I was there.

When I first started studying this,
the whole idea of being "blessed"

wasn't what it is today.

It was not, like it is now,

an entire line of "#blessed" home goods.

It was not yet a flood of "#blessed"
vanity license plates and T-shirts

and neon wall art.

I had no idea that "blessed" would become
one of the most common cultural cliches,

one of the most used
hashtags on Instagram,

to celebrate barely there bikini shots,

as if to say, "I am so blessed.

Thank you, Jesus, for this body."

(Laughter)

I had not yet fully grasped
the way that the prosperity gospel

had become the great civil religion,

offering another transcendent account

of the core of the American Dream.

Rather than worshipping
the founding of America itself,

the prosperity gospel
worshipped Americans.

It deifies and ritualizes their hungers,

their hard work and moral fiber.

Americans believe in a gospel of optimism,

and they are their own proof.

But despite telling myself,

"I'm just studying this stuff,
I'm nothing like them,"

when I got my diagnosis,

I suddenly understood
how deeply invested I was

in my own Horatio Alger theology.

If you live in this culture,
whether you are religious or not,

it is extremely difficult
to avoid falling into the trap

of believing that virtue
and success go hand in hand.

The more I stared down my diagnosis,

the more I recognized
that I had my own quiet version

of the idea that good things
happen to good people.

Aren't I good?

Aren't I special somehow?

I have committed zero homicides

to date.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

So why is this happening to me?

I wanted God to make me good

and to reward my faith with just a few
shining awards along the way.

OK, like, a lot of shining awards.

(Laughter)

I believed that hardships
were only detours

on what I was certain would be
my long, long life.

As is this case with many of us,
it's a mindset that served me well.

The gospel of success drove me to achieve,

to dream big,

to abandon fear.

It was a mindset that served me well

until it didn't,

until I was confronted with something
I couldn't manage my way out of;

until I found myself
saying into the phone,

"But I have a son,"

because it was all
I could think of to say.

That was the most difficult
moment to accept:

the phone call, the walk to the hospital,

when I realized that my own
personal prosperity gospel

had failed me.

Anything I thought was good
or special about me could not save me --

my hard work, my personality,

my humor, my perspective.

I had to face the fact that my life
is built with paper walls,

and so is everyone else's.

It is a hard thought to accept
that we are all a breath away

from a problem that could
destroy something irreplaceable

or alter our lives completely.

We know that in life
there are befores and afters.

I am asked all the time to say
that I would never go back,

or that I've gained
so much in perspective.

And I tell them no,

before was better.

A few months after I got sick,
I wrote about this

and then I sent it off to an editor
at the "New York Times."

In retrospect, taking one of the most
vulnerable moments of your life

and turning into an op-ed

is not an amazing way
to feel less vulnerable.

(Laughter)

I got thousands of letters and emails.

I still get them every day.

I think it is because
of the questions I asked.

I asked: How do you live
without quite so many reasons

for the bad things that happen?

I asked: Would it be better to live
without outrageous formulas

for why people deserve what they get?

And what was so funny
and so terrible was, of course,

I thought I asked people to simmer down

on needing an explanation
for the bad things that happened.

So what did thousands of readers do?

Yeah, they wrote to defend the idea
that there had to be a reason

for what happened to me.

And they really want me
to understand the reason.

People want me to reassure them
that my cancer is all part of a plan.

A few letters even suggested
it was God's plan that I get cancer

so I could help people
by writing about it.

People are certain
it is a test of my character

or proof of something terrible I've done.

They want me to know without a doubt

that there is a hidden logic
to this seeming chaos.

They tell my husband,

while I'm still in the hospital,

that everything happens for a reason,

and then stammer awkwardly when he says,

"I'd love to hear it.

I'd love to hear the reason
my wife is dying."

And I get it.

We all want reasons.

We want formulas

to predict whether
our hard work will pay off,

whether our love and support
will always make our partners happy

and our kids love us.

We want to live in a world
in which not one ounce

of our hard work or our pain
or our deepest hopes will be for nothing.

We want to live in a world
in which nothing is lost.

But what I have learned
in living with stage IV cancer

is that there is no easy correlation

between how hard I try

and the length of my life.

In the last three years,
I've experienced more pain and trauma

than I ever thought I could survive.

I realized the other day that I've had
so many abdominal surgeries

that I'm on my fifth belly button,

and this last one is my least favorite.

(Laughter)

But at the same time,
I've experienced love,

so much love,

love I find hard to explain.

The other day, I was reading the findings

of the Near Death Experience
Research Foundation,

and yes, there is such a thing.

People were interviewed
about their brushes with death

in all kinds of circumstances:

car accidents, labor and delivery,

suicides.

And many reported the same odd thing:

love.

I'm sure I would have ignored it
if it hadn't reminded me

of something I had experienced,

something I felt
uncomfortable telling anyone:

that when I was sure
that I was going to die,

I didn't feel angry.

I felt loved.

It was one of the most surreal things
I have experienced.

In a time in which I should have
felt abandoned by God,

I was not reduced to ashes.

I felt like I was floating,

floating on the love and prayers

of all those who hummed
around me like worker bees,

bringing me notes and socks and flowers

and quilts embroidered
with words of encouragement.

But when they sat beside me,

my hand in their hands,

my own suffering began to feel
like it had revealed to me

the suffering of others.

I was entering a world
of people just like me,

people stumbling around in the debris

of dreams they thought
they were entitled to

and plans they didn't
realize they had made.

It was a feeling of being more connected,
somehow, with other people,

experiencing the same situation.

And that feeling
stayed with me for months.

In fact, I'd grown so accustomed to it

that I started to panic
at the prospect of losing it.

So I began to ask friends, theologians,
historians, nuns I liked,

"What I am I going to do
when that loving feeling is gone?"

And they knew exactly
what I was talking about,

because they had either
experienced it themselves

or they'd read about it
in great works of Christian theology.

And they said,

"Yeah, it'll go.

The feelings will go.

And there will be no formula
for how to get it back."

But they offered me
this little piece of reassurance,

and I clung to it.

They said,

"When the feelings recede like the tides,

they will leave an imprint."

And they do.

And it is not proof of anything,

and it is nothing to boast about.

It was just a gift.

So I can't respond to
the thousands of emails I get

with my own five-step plan
to divine health

and magical floating feelings.

I see that the world is jolted by events
that are wonderful and terrible,

gorgeous and tragic.

I can't reconcile the contradiction,

except that I am beginning to believe
that these opposites

do not cancel each other out.

Life is so beautiful,

and life is so hard.

Today, I am doing quite well.

The immunotherapy drugs
appear to be working,

and we are watching
and waiting with scans.

I hope I will live a long time.

I hope I will live long enough
to embarrass my son

and to watch my husband
lose his beautiful hair.

And I think I might.

But I am learning to live

and to love

without counting the cost,

without reasons and assurances
that nothing will be lost.

Life will break your heart,

and life may take everything you have

and everything you hope for.

But there is one kind
of prosperity gospel that I believe in.

I believe that in the darkness,

even there,

there will be beauty,

and there will be love.

And every now and then,

it will feel like more than enough.

Thank you.

(Applause)