People often say, everything happens for a reason. They suggest that everything is caused by God. They think that we might not always know the reason, but that there always is a specific purposeful cause. I think I probably believed this idea in the past. I don’t think I do anymore.

Instead I think, everything happens, period. There are reasons why things happen, but not everything happens for a reason.

My twins identify as transgender. Reasons might include co-occurring diagnoses, genetic predisposition, social climate, or psychological stress. Or there might be some as yet unknown reasons why. But I don’t believe there is some underlying purposeful cause.

Did God plan for them to experience gender dysphoria, be born in the age where gender confirmation surgery exists, and live in a family whose dynamic contributed in some way to their choices? Did God plan for me to be the mother of twins who are transgender so that I would speak out about my experience?

Or did the timing of their existence coincide with a culture that is changing how it views gender? Did they happen to be born into a family that both celebrates uniqueness and where there were challenging emotional dynamics? Did the particulars of my nature and nurture combine in me to seek answers, take initiative, and share my journey?

I believe God cares deeply about the choices that we make. I believe he’s aware of our circumstances, and interested in our responses and decisions. I believe he created the world and everything in it, including the processes by which things and people change and grow. But I don’t believe he orchestrates every move, every circumstance, every situation.

I had a baby brother that was born with a heart defect back in the 1970s when open heart surgery, particularly on an infant, was not routine. He died following the surgery attempting to repair his heart when he was nine months. I was three years old.

His life and death have affected all of my fifty years. I remember him responding especially to me when my mom went to the basement to do laundry and was carrying him facing backwards over her shoulder. I would follow behind and do silly things and make him giggle and jump. The thought still makes me smile.

I also remember sitting on the back porch of our house, thinking to myself, no one loves me. This happened around the time of his surgery. I’m not sure if it was before or after he died. All I knew, as a three-year-old, was that everyone was busy and no one had time for me. A three-year-old doesn’t understand priorities, limited time and energy, and life and death circumstances. They just know they don’t seem important enough to receive love and attention. My parents were busy caring for a very sick little boy, there were four of us other children, and my oldest brother who is ten years older than me was often given responsibility to care for me and my siblings. I’m sure he did a fine job, but a 13-year-old brother doesn’t provide the same love and care as a parent. When combined with the sensitive, emotional personality with which I was born, these circumstances birthed my feelings of being unloved.

I was not consciously aware of them. But they have been foundational to how I have seen myself my entire life.

Flash forward forty years. I had become a wife and mother of three little ones. My husband and I were good friends with a couple from our church. We shared many board games, music rehearsals, Bible studies, and just regular life. After we relocated far away to a city in another part of the country, we still connected occasionally through visits to each other’s homes.

Not long after we discovered Facebook, my husband and I reconnected with this couple there online. It was fun to think we might be able to interact more frequently through this cool new medium. Instead, soon after rediscovering them, this new method of communication brought us word of the death of the wife due to an accident.

That opened up a whole new line of questioning in my life. It made no sense to me that God would allow this wonderful woman, someone I valued, and someone so many people admired as faithful, to be taken from her husband and her four young children so prematurely. Her death prompted me to seek the core of faith.

Two people. Two lives. Both intertwined with mine. The loss of each of them has affected the course of my entire life. One loss foundational to who I am. The other foundational to my purpose on this earth.

Did God cause my baby brother to have a heart defect? Did God cause the accident that took the life of my friend? Did God cause these things so that I would be impacted in some way?

Or did these things occur because we live in a world where things and people do not last forever? Did they happen because of the moment in history in which they lived?

Losing my baby brother as a three-year-old has caused me to be a more compassionate person. Losing my friend almost ten years ago has contributed to me seeking deeper meaning in life. But those are the results of things just happening. And those results are good. That doesn’t mean those results are the reason those things needed to happen.

Everything happens. We get to choose what we do with that. Do we spend our time searching for an underlying purpose? Or do we find purpose in how we respond?