Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

In October, Bowler starts her chemotherapy treatment in the trial at Emory. She finds herself drawn to writing and chronicles her experiences as a person trying to understand why she is dying of cancer in a world in which everything happens for a reason. She sends her essay to The New York Times, which publishes it in the Sunday Review. Millions of people read the essay. Bowler receives an amazing number of vastly different responses. She catalogs these in this chapter. She describes reading stories of terrible suffering. Prosperity gospel adherents shame her, suggesting that she should have already healed herself. This becomes an incredibly emotional experience for her as she strives to figure out what is productive and meaningful from replies to her essay.

On Palm Sunday, Bowler and her husband take Zach, who is two, to church for the first time. They discover there is no nursery and they must take their son into the sanctuary. Because it is Palm Sunday, Zach receives a palm frond to wave. Bowler carries him, along with the other children, to the chancel near the altar to place his frond on the altar. She reflects that the processional of Jesus in Jerusalem which they are commemorating on Palm Sunday was both a celebration and a funeral march.