Everything Happens

Jul 10

5 min read

Updated: Aug 23

I used to be a steadfast believer in the quote, "Everything happens for a reason."

To me, this meant that every good thing I had planned for my future would eventually find me - there may just be a few detours along the way that I won't anticipate. But it will all happen; I will arrive.

When perceiving life in this way, it's easy to romanticize it and get lost in the whimsy and awe of it all. In the manifestation of happiness. And don't get me wrong, I think there's plenty of room for a positivity like this - it's charming in a way only kids and young adults can genuinely perceive the world.

But before you know it... the "big life stuff" happens. And then that vision gets tainted.

I remember waiting for my boyfriend to come home from work so we could go to a movie. Macy was chilling on my lap when he finally walked through the door, and I noticed right away that he seemed run down and on edge from the day he just had. He started going into detail about how he was having trouble communicating, not finding the right words or needing to pause when he spoke, and that his heart rate had been through the roof all day. At the time, he was working through his masters program online for Library Science, so we decided all of this could be related to anxiety or stress.

"And then there was this patron who was signing up for a library card, and I needed her phone number to complete the process... I had to ask her to repeat it 5 times, and I still wasn't getting it right. I asked my coworker to take over so I could go into the back room and regroup - it was so embarrassing, she probably thought I was having a stroke."

The silence that came after that last sentence was deafening. We whipped out Google, fingers flying over keyboards, and sure enough, all the symptoms of a stroke were laid out in what felt like specific detail to everything Billy had described. A quiet stillness settled around us as we sat there with it, the figurative roadmap of our future we were comfortably following disintegrated in thin air.

From the second that doctor left the room, it had felt like I was splashed with cold water. Woken up. Sobered to the fact that bad, scary, life-altering things can happen to you or your loved ones at any moment, and that no amount of positivity or innate, inner goodness can stop it. Things just happen. And I think it was the very first time I really, truly, understood and believed that.

"Life just happens."

In the months following that hospital stay and the scans/surgeries that followed, that's all I could think - there isn't a reason, there is no bigger picture where your life is guaranteed to work out exactly as you need it to. Good health isn't promised. Longevity isn't guaranteed. I'm not owed a happy life because my intentions are pure. Life. Just. Happens. And coming to terms with your mortality at 27 is enough to stop you in your tracks and reevaluate your outlook on life - for better or for worse.

In the 2-3 years leading up to Billy's medical scare, I had been having my own health issues that no professional really had answers for. I was going to appointments weekly/monthly, hoping this one would be the "a-ha" appointment that brought relief, hope, remedy - and almost every single one ended in tears. The only thing keeping me going was the mindset that there was a reason it was taking so long; there's a lesson in all of this. But that stroke had me staring at my parent's basement ceiling at 3am thinking I could die from a mystery illness that I'm intensely trying to decode, without any real reason for it happening. Maybe I was one coordinator away from being set up with the right doctor; maybe if I had worded something differently it would have sparked a different line of thinking.

But what haunted me the most was that I could die before I truly did anything with my life. Before I felt fulfilled and happy. Before I did all the little things I've been wanting to do, but told myself I "wasn't ready for."

It was the realization that life can just end, without warning or meaning. An obvious fact that became a hard truth.

This panicked feeling of never experiencing the things you thought you would, and the grief that can overcome when life may not look how you envisioned it, cannot be a population of 1 reality - I know I'm not alone. For the young adults around me, I've seen delayed weddings and engagements, infertility, miscarriages, illness and cancer diagnoses, young deaths, mental health crises, just getting by paycheck to paycheck, a whole ass pandemic and the never-ending list of trauma that came from it... we can go on forever. These events - the things that derail the perfect timeline we dreamed up as kids - are heartbreaking. They're the "big life stuff" and the things I just never considered would actually happen to me or the people around me before we "arrived". That sounds so silly now.

3 years have passed since Billy's stroke. 3 years of healing. 3 years of rearranging our expectations for our future. 3 years of just getting by - and now I'm confident, I understand, that we're not alone in our grief for the life we wanted. But we're also not alone in our successes to persevere.

While recovering, Billy graduated with his masters in Library Science. I moved back to Grand Rapids and we found an apartment that will do until we can afford a home. We're both working full time in positions we love. The possibility of getting engaged finally feels attainable. All this to say: we've been able to stretch out the stiffness of the last 3 years and found some normalcy. Life has continued.

So now, as of July 2026, my mindset has changed yet again.

Everything happens - the moments so beautiful you pause to memorize every single way the golden light is reflecting off of his hazel eyes; the moments so heartbreaking you find your head in your hands more than you throw it back in laughter; the moments so quiet you look around to see if you're as alone as you feel; the moments so serendipitous you find tears pricking your eyes from happiness and relief that something is going your way this time. Life is about duality, and building the wisdom and strength to hold it all at once. It's about learning how to carry heavy loads with grace and resilience.

If you're someone who is weighed down by the reality of your life and how it's played out up to this point - you are not alone. Not even a little bit. The struggle and trauma of "big life stuff" is a collective phenomenon that is just a part of time passing. Things happen, life happens... But maybe, finding the beauty in the courage it takes to continue on is the lesson in all of this - maybe these are the things that guide us toward meaning, self-fulfillment and purpose. If so, what an intricate thing to be a part of.

What a spectacular thing to happen.