Our brains are designed to search for patterns. Infants are quickly able to learn their parents face and the sounds of their voice. This explains why people see images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in everything from toast to tree stumps to water stains on windows.

Our brains look for other patterns as well. The one I find most offensive is when people say "I know such-and-such happened for a reason." There is no reason why things happen. People die in accidents every day and there is no "divine plan" that it was their day to die. There is no reason why one person lives and the person sitting next to them dies. It was just another random event in their lives. The only reason why it has any meaning is because WE assign a meaning to it. Specifically, I was thinking of the girl who died when her car drove into a sinkhole on a road outside Tabiona.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52188517-78/collapse-continued-county-duchesne.html.csp

It wasn't her day to die. God didn't wash out the road to kill her. It was just a very tragic accident. Assigning some meaning or reason for her death may make her friends and family feel better but it doesn't make it so. It just makes it less painful to deal with.

Our whole life we look for answers to why things happen to us. Good people have sick children and people blame them for committing some secret sin. People who lie and cheat live in nice houses while those who work hard never seem to get a break. People smoke for most of their adult life and never get cancer while someone who never smokes does. Of course, many people who smoke DO get cancer and heart disease and often life doesn't seem fair. Religion, especially the LDS church, tells you that if you live a righteous life, you will be blessed so when crap happens to you everyone looks down on you and says to themselves "what did they do to deserve this?" and worst of all, we do it to ourselves as well.

The fact is bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. It's not about sinning or being righteous. It's about dumb luck; being in the right place at the right time (or the wrong place at the wrong time); and causality. If you speed, chances are you will eventually get into a wreck. Sometimes we cause our own grief but most of the time it's just bad luck.

The point I'm trying to make is, when something bad (or even something good) happens to you, you should take some time to see if it happened because of something you did or didn't do but don't waste your time trying to figure out the meaning behind what happened. It happened. Accept it. Figure out what to do about it and go on with your life.

and I was also searching for meaning in my cousin's death--she was 3 days older than I am and died when her 6 children were ages 3 to 15--I read an article about a mother who lost her young son to something like cancer. I even saved the article, but don't have it with me. She said that when she finally came to the realization that there was NO GOOD REASON why her son died, that it was UNACCEPTABLE that he had died, she was able to come to terms with it. Made A LOT more sense to me.

It just really irritates me when Oprah and Dr. Phil say things like that--or that by things we do, we invite these things into our lives. Bullshit. Tell that to a sexual abuse survivor. Yep--it happened for a reason or you somehow invited it into your life.

Oprah is a sexual abuse survivor. She should know better!

I agree with that young mother. If I'm looking for a reason something happened, I'm usually thinking there's something I could have done to change/prevent it. Maybe I could have prayed harder, maybe I needed to me more faithful etc. etc. etc. Not healthy for me at all.

Yup thats what drove me nuts when my 14 year old brother drowned. Since I was a TBM at the time I listened to all the reasons why my brother needed to die. All of them made me furious with God. Why is it his time to go? Why in the hell would he need a 14 year old boy to preach the gospel to unbelievers? God has millions of people in heaven. He didn't want to leave earth to preach the gospel. As long as I searched for a reason I was angry bitter and horribly sad. Peace came with time, along with acceptance. At the end of the day no reason is good enough to lose somebody you love. There is no good reason for rape, murder, genocide etc. Sometimes life just sucks.

to believe that "sh*t happens" than it is to try to find meaning in a tragic death.

In fact, I spent quite a bit of mental energy trying to make sense of a death that occurred during my last few months in the church. It didn't work. God either had horrible judgement, was testing everyone (was a jerk), didn't pay attention when that person was probably pleading with him for help, or who KNOWS what God had in mind.

When I stopped believing in God (later), I felt so much better about that death. It WASN'T part of some plan or test, or anything else. Just a sad accident.