--- product_id: 158993836 title: "Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved" price: "€ 25.87" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.gr/products/158993836-everything-happens-for-a-reason-and-other-lies-ive-loved store_origin: GR region: Greece --- # Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved **Price:** € 25.87 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved - **How much does it cost?** € 25.87 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.gr](https://www.desertcart.gr/products/158993836-everything-happens-for-a-reason-and-other-lies-ive-loved) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before. Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live. Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason “I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?” —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising Review: A powerful memoir about living despite - "Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved" by Kate Bowler is a powerful memoir about living despite. Despite fear, despite uncertainty and - in the author's case - despite a diagnosis of Stage IV colon cancer. It's about love, legacy, God and "not skipping to the end". And it is moving. And snarky and profound and angry and real in ways I never would have expected from what some have inaccurately called a "cancer memoir". The author only recently came across my radar - she and a family member share a similar diagnosis, and he happened to pass along one of her FB posts. It was about Holy Saturday, and it was insightful and smart and made me think. "Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved" also made me think: "I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future." What a whole-body description of grief! The book is a controlled tangle of introspection and awareness that life is shorter than any of us might like, but also challenges many of the notions the author - and we as readers - hold about entitlement and wellness, about hope and faith and positivity. There's just a lot of good stuff in here. The writing is rich and textured and entirely readable - a rarity in so many memoirs. And the voice is authentic, whether the author is recounting conversations with her oncologist or her BFF or revealing the internal dialog of a mother and wife staring death in the face and terrified she might blink. Ultimately, "Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved" is a story for us all. For those of us dealing with illness and loss and the big questions around Thy Will not Mine theology, for those of us wondering how to support loved ones who have been diagnosed with cancer or are going through dark times, and for those of us yearning to be more present as people of the Good News. In her vulnerability, Kate Bowler has something to say to us all. Review: Worth the read for anyone - I read this book because it was recommended at some point by my pastor. I can't remember how I ended up finding the book as it was not intentional I came about it. I definitely appreciated the author's honesty. I was surprised how much I smiled reading a book about a young woman with cancer, but it also made me cry so there were both ends of the spectrum. I'm not sure I fully understand the conviction that "everything happens for a reason" is a complete lie. I guess I don't believe this. I do believe G-d has allowed me to suffer (multiple times) in my life and I do know it had a reason, but I can see how if you are part of this "prosperity gospel" (which I had never heard of before) that statement could mean something different. As she says in her book, to those who believe in the prosperity gospel, if something bad happened it meant that you were somehow failing in your faith or sinning. This is simply not the G-d I know. It is because he loves me that I have had to endure suffering so that I can learn to be more like him. I don't always understand the why or like it. It is painful as Hebrews 12:11 says. Each person and whatever they are going through will need to wrestle with G-d as Jacob did and we may even be left at a brook in Cherith or the wilderness in a cave like Elijah. What is the miracle is that she is still alive. This happened in 2015 and it is 2024 and she is still alive despite being given 2 months to live multiple times. Is that not a miracle that God would defy what medicine said was possible? Has he not redeemed her even if she is not cured? I mean she went from potentially leaving her husband and son to live the rest of this earthly life without her to seeing her son grow to 11 years old (which is how old he would be if he was 2 in the book). I do not know yet what it means to have joy in suffering either but we are told we should consider it (James 1:2-4). I think this book made me reflect on my own life as I also have a husband and a young daughter and I already had the miracle in my life of surviving death so I know that if I am still here there is a reason for it. He has a plan for me and I must seek it daily. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and the thoughts it provoked. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Despite the content it did not make me feel depressed but hopeful of what work he is doing in others as well. We do not suffer alone. He is with us. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #7,967 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #11 in Medical Professional Biographies #63 in Christian Self Help #211 in Memoirs (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 6,519 Reviews | ## Images ![Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81TFsdGBd4L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A powerful memoir about living despite *by L***E on April 14, 2020* "Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved" by Kate Bowler is a powerful memoir about living despite. Despite fear, despite uncertainty and - in the author's case - despite a diagnosis of Stage IV colon cancer. It's about love, legacy, God and "not skipping to the end". And it is moving. And snarky and profound and angry and real in ways I never would have expected from what some have inaccurately called a "cancer memoir". The author only recently came across my radar - she and a family member share a similar diagnosis, and he happened to pass along one of her FB posts. It was about Holy Saturday, and it was insightful and smart and made me think. "Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved" also made me think: "I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future." What a whole-body description of grief! The book is a controlled tangle of introspection and awareness that life is shorter than any of us might like, but also challenges many of the notions the author - and we as readers - hold about entitlement and wellness, about hope and faith and positivity. There's just a lot of good stuff in here. The writing is rich and textured and entirely readable - a rarity in so many memoirs. And the voice is authentic, whether the author is recounting conversations with her oncologist or her BFF or revealing the internal dialog of a mother and wife staring death in the face and terrified she might blink. Ultimately, "Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved" is a story for us all. For those of us dealing with illness and loss and the big questions around Thy Will not Mine theology, for those of us wondering how to support loved ones who have been diagnosed with cancer or are going through dark times, and for those of us yearning to be more present as people of the Good News. In her vulnerability, Kate Bowler has something to say to us all. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Worth the read for anyone *by T***R on June 8, 2024* I read this book because it was recommended at some point by my pastor. I can't remember how I ended up finding the book as it was not intentional I came about it. I definitely appreciated the author's honesty. I was surprised how much I smiled reading a book about a young woman with cancer, but it also made me cry so there were both ends of the spectrum. I'm not sure I fully understand the conviction that "everything happens for a reason" is a complete lie. I guess I don't believe this. I do believe G-d has allowed me to suffer (multiple times) in my life and I do know it had a reason, but I can see how if you are part of this "prosperity gospel" (which I had never heard of before) that statement could mean something different. As she says in her book, to those who believe in the prosperity gospel, if something bad happened it meant that you were somehow failing in your faith or sinning. This is simply not the G-d I know. It is because he loves me that I have had to endure suffering so that I can learn to be more like him. I don't always understand the why or like it. It is painful as Hebrews 12:11 says. Each person and whatever they are going through will need to wrestle with G-d as Jacob did and we may even be left at a brook in Cherith or the wilderness in a cave like Elijah. What is the miracle is that she is still alive. This happened in 2015 and it is 2024 and she is still alive despite being given 2 months to live multiple times. Is that not a miracle that God would defy what medicine said was possible? Has he not redeemed her even if she is not cured? I mean she went from potentially leaving her husband and son to live the rest of this earthly life without her to seeing her son grow to 11 years old (which is how old he would be if he was 2 in the book). I do not know yet what it means to have joy in suffering either but we are told we should consider it (James 1:2-4). I think this book made me reflect on my own life as I also have a husband and a young daughter and I already had the miracle in my life of surviving death so I know that if I am still here there is a reason for it. He has a plan for me and I must seek it daily. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and the thoughts it provoked. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Despite the content it did not make me feel depressed but hopeful of what work he is doing in others as well. We do not suffer alone. He is with us. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Advice on how to face life and how the rest of us can help each other face it constructively *by W***N on January 9, 2019* This is an autobiography of what Kate Bowler is enduring as a patient diagnosed with colon cancer at a young age (I estimate in her early 30s) with a husband and a very young child. She teaches at Duke University in the theology department. Her thesis topic was on the prosperity gospel churches. In the course of the book, she, therefore, explores her feelings and impressions through both her religious faith and through many of the "prosperity gospel" notions that have permeated the mainstream of American society in general in the form of self-help books. Although this is a deeply sad situation for any ambitious person to be facing, and I can only hope for her to experience a miraculous cure, the work has its moments of humor. She has a good wit and applies it well. Perhaps most importantly, I have learned from this some things that I should be cautious about saying to someone who is confronted with this kind of situation. If the reader has any interest in offering genuine comfort to someone who is facing death at any time (a friend, a spouse, some loved one), this might be a helpful guide on what to do and what not to do. In that way, in general, it may also help us with comforting others who daily face other forms of enduring bitterness. Evidently, due to her thesis study, she often reflects on our culture of self-help books, which she probably rightly suspects are rooted in our inherent tendency to think we can control our circumstances by lifting ourselves up by the bootstraps. Sometimes, it is not so. Through her musings, she reflects on how damaging this can be. I had not realized just how pervasive this prosperity gospel is in our culture, and how it has even infected my own way of thinking. I do pray that she is healed somehow, but she ends during her cancer treatment with no clear way through. Our culture likes a happy ending, but we should read this to understand what to do when what we confront is not (necessarily) going to be that way. Perhaps pray like David, but realize that what is, is. I think the title is perhaps a bit too pessimistic. The typical platitude of "everything happens for a reason" is of course questioned, and rightly so. We face things in life that are sometimes nothing but bitter and we cannot understand why. We may only know when we are in the arms of Jesus if this faith is what is true. When we walk through the valley of darkness, we are largely alone in our suffering, but she tells us how she has navigated the day to day in this world and where she found comfort. I think sometimes it struck me as a little too sarcastic about people's intentions. It's true that we cannot avoid those sorts of feelings about people, and this is an area where I am helpless to say anything against such matters, as this is how she felt. Still, that was my personal impression in a few places. Nevertheless, I found this book really worth my time to read and I come away a little better enlightened. ## Frequently Bought Together - Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved - No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) - The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.gr/products/158993836-everything-happens-for-a-reason-and-other-lies-ive-loved](https://www.desertcart.gr/products/158993836-everything-happens-for-a-reason-and-other-lies-ive-loved) --- *Product available on Desertcart Greece* *Store origin: GR* *Last updated: 2026-05-10*