Everything has a reason… and another lie that I fell in love with

Kate Bowler — a professor at Duke Divinity School — studied the prosperity gospel, which views luck as a blessing and misfortune as a sign of God's disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life points to blessing. She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and cherishes every day with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own imminent death forces Kate to realize: she has always lived with the belief that she could control her fate through sheer will. If you can't cope and succumb to illness or adversity, you are a failure. And now Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking can shrink her tumors. She wonders: what does it mean to die in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate loses this confidence only to discover that without it, life is hard, but more beautiful than ever before. Candid and amusing, dark and wise, Kate Bowler deeply engages the reader in her life in a book that she lovingly fills with a colorful, often humorous entourage of friends, church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Here are Kate's irreverent, hard-won observations about death and how it has taught her to live. Just remember, if cancer, or divorce, or any of the world's existing tragedies don't kill you, then the good intentions of people surely will. — Kate Bowler