When tragedy strikes, how do we react? What goes through our mind? How do we cope?

The passing of legendary basketball icon Kobe Bryant earlier this week made me reflect on this. As my mind raced, trying to process the magnitude and devastating nature of this loss, I kept asking the same question — “Why, God?” — and falling into a pit of hopelessness after not getting any semblance of understanding.

I imagine this is a cycle familiar to many of us when we mourn. We try to rationalize the tragedy. We beg God for answers. We come no closer to finding answers. We begin to lose hope and faith.

Yesterday on Twitter, writer and theologian Candice Benbow, whom I follow, offered some perspective on loss and our burning desire to know “Why?” in the midst of grief, having herself asked the same question after the loss of her mother years ago. Her words were insightful to me, so I thought I’d share.

---

“Processing the accident with a dear friend of mine yesterday, she said her faith had been shaken by it and was causing her to question. Why the Bryant family and not hers? Why does God prevent some tragedies and not others? Why do some families lose and others remain whole?
I understood what she was asking. Yet I pushed back on the notion only some of us lose. We all experience loss. Some ways more horrific than others. Some ways sooner than others. But we all lose. And no matter how we lose, it is never fair because loss is inherently unfair.
And because we all lose and seemingly have no control over that, I don’t ask why anymore. When we’re asking that, we are usually looking for an explanation. Not every loss can be explained the way we want them to be.
It’s not like you’re going to look at the worst thing you faced…the death of a dear loved one…a violation or trauma…and agree it needed to happen to make you better. I just don’t believe God is that mean or that dumb to believe we’d go for that.
I believe things happen that can be explained either by harmful actions of others or by the unexplainable actions of Life. It took a while but that is a sufficient enough answer *for me*.
I used to think I was going to have all these questions for God once I got to Heaven. All the Whys? But honestly, there’s nothing God could say that would make the losses and pain I’ve experienced in this life “okay”. And God knows that.
Now, when I think about the questions I will ask God, they have changed. “I’m in?! Bet! Can I scoot past you then? I see my mama over there under that tree by the river.” The moment I’m reunited with her is worth more than any explanation God could give me about why she’s gone.
In time, I think the question transitions from “Why did this happen?” to “How do we get through this loss and remember we have not lost everything?” (…because we never lose everything. There is always something that remains, even if it’s our own life.)
That question always brings me back to hope, possibility and community—all of the good things. And when I have lost, I need to be reminded of the good things.“

---