No reason

Nailed it.  I enjoyed reading this article.  He points out that the phrase "everything happens for a reason" is not very comforting for most abuse survivors. 



http://johnpavlovitz.com/2015/05/29/why-everything-does-not-happen-for-a-reason/

 I really like his conclusion:

No I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe there is meaning in how we respond to all things that happen to us, even when they are not at all good things.

My counselor shared another point of view.  Things happen when people make stupid choices.  Things happen because we were there when someone made stupid choices.  This morning was a great example.  I have a 30 minute commute on the freeway to go to work.  This morning I had to brake to avoid hitting a person that swerved into my lane to prevent hitting a slow poke merging into his lane.  Domino affect, but it had nothing really to do with me.  First I was terrified....I felt anger briefly then I thought how blessed I was that my brakes work very well and we all missed each other.  Cool.  For some people they search for meaning to try to make sense of their world.  But sometimes people choose to make other people suffer.  Trying to make meaning or justify their behavior eventually invalidates the victim.  Making them a needed target.  Nobody needs to be made a target.  We are born into a violent crazy world.  Bad stuff happens to everybody.  I was persecuted by my pedophile neighbor because I lived on the same street.  I did nothing wrong.  He had no reason to hurt me other than he enjoyed hurting people.  He made lousy choices I suffer the consequences.  It sucks.  I find no comfort in someone telling me what happened to me was for a reason.  I do believe that if I am determined God will help me turn it into something good.  I chose to share in this blog my experience in the hope someone can learn something good from my experiences.  I use my understanding of abuse to have compassion for the students in the inner-city school I work at.  Heavenly Father is awesome at taking something horrible, like Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers into something awesome when Joseph saved Egypt by preparing for the famine.  I can tear myself up trying to understand the reason behind my abuser's behavior.  Or I can take this mess and make something amazing out of it.  I am choosing the later.  My abuser's reasoning is his problem not mine.  Dwelling on understanding his thinking, to me, is a waste of my time.  Sometimes people do dumb stuff and that is the reason somethings happen.  I prefer to be involved with people that with reason and planning bring about wonderful things.  I think that is one of the reasons I enjoy working at the school.  Teachers are working hard to make amazing things happen.