Bethyfly’s Reviews > Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved > Status Update

Be willing to stare down the ugliness and sadness. Life is absurdly hard, and pretending it isn’t is exhausting.

That’s the secret- don’t skip to the end.

I read an article about how people in grief swear because they feel the English language has reached its limit in a time of inarticulate sorrow. Or at least that’s what I tell people when I am casually dropping f-bombs over lunch as I explain the mysteries of Lent.

The promise of heaven to me is this: someday I will get a new set of lungs and I will swim away.
But first I will drown.

Spiritual laws offer an elegant solution to the problem of unfairness. They create a Newtonian universe in which the chaos of the world seems reducible to simple cause and effect. The stories of people’s lives can be plotted by whether or not they follow the rules. In this world there is not such thing as undeserved pain. There is no word for tragedy.