Understanding Doesn't Always Matter

At 49 years old, I still struggle with the fact that I'll never really know the reasons why things happened to me. People love to blame God—I used to, too. But at some point, I had to accept reality: God couldn't stop all of this. Sure, He saw the bad, He saw evil. But people—people can be evil, and there's a reason for that. God and Satan. Satan came to rule on earth, and God made humans so our bodies can be hurt or changed in so many ways. No two people are the same. Some are born with passion and fire they can't put out, some have it beaten out of them, and some just spend their life fighting to get through. If you're reading this and you're one of the survivors—someone who's made it to where I am—I'll tell you: the "whys" don't matter anymore. The "how comes" and "what ifs" just don't matter. What matters is that you're here, reading this. This message is coming to you only because I went through that pain. That's the truth. When Searching for Answers Becomes Its Own Prison I spent decades of my life trapped in an endless loop of questions. Why did this happen to me? Who could have stopped it? What if things had been different? These questions became their own kind of prison—one I built myself, brick by brick, question by question. The human mind craves understanding. We're wired to seek patterns, explanations, and meaning in everything we experience. When something painful happens, especially something traumatic, our brains work overtime trying to make sense of it. It's a natural response, but it can become destructive when there are no satisfying answers to be found.

Some wounds don't come with explanations. Some people don't leave notes explaining their actions. Some betrayals don't come with closure. And sometimes, even when we do get "answers," they don't actually heal anything—they just give us something else to obsess over. The Weight of Unanswerable Questions Here's what I've learned: carrying around unanswerable questions is like hauling stones in your backpack while trying to climb a mountain. Each "why" and "what if" adds another heavy rock, weighing you down, making the journey forward nearly impossible. The most freeing day of my life wasn't when I found all the answers—it was when I finally understood I didn't need them to move forward. Don't get me wrong. This isn't about forgetting what happened or pretending it doesn't matter. It's not about letting people off the hook for the harm they've caused. It's about recognizing that your healing doesn't have to wait for understanding to arrive. The Truth About Understanding Trauma When terrible things happen, we often hear phrases like: "Everything happens for a reason" "One day you'll understand why this happened" "God has a plan in all this" For some people, these sentiments provide comfort. For others—many others—they're like salt in an open wound. Because here's the uncomfortable truth: sometimes terrible things happen for no good reason at all. Sometimes people cause harm because they're broken, not because the universe is orchestrating some grand lesson. I'm not saying there's no meaning to be found in suffering. I'm saying that meaning doesn't always come in the form of understanding "why."

Finding Purpose Without Understanding I spent decades angry at God, wondering why He allowed my pain. Why didn't He stop what happened? Where was the divine intervention when I needed it most? These questions nearly destroyed my faith entirely. What finally changed wasn't finding answers—it was shifting the questions. Instead of asking why God allowed my suffering, I began to ask how I could use my experiences to help others. Instead of demanding explanations for the past, I started looking for purpose in the present. That shift didn't happen overnight. It came slowly, painfully, through years of work—therapy, prayer, community, and the daily choice to keep moving forward even when the weight of unanswered questions felt unbearable. The Liberation of Letting Go And here's another truth that took me far too long to learn: even if you find all the answers to your questions, the "whos" and "whys," trust me, they probably won't bring the peace you're seeking. Because even if you find those answers, they'll often bring new pain. Sometimes, it's better to let go instead of keep wondering. Letting go doesn't mean forgetting. It doesn't mean excusing. It means refusing to let the search for understanding keep you trapped in the past. It means saying: "This happened. It was wrong. I didn't deserve it. And I don't need to understand why to know I deserve healing." Moving Forward Without a Map When you stop demanding answers before you allow yourself to heal, something remarkable happens. The energy you once spent interrogating the past becomes available for building your future. Moving forward without complete understanding feels like walking through fog at first. You can't see the whole path ahead. You don't have a perfect map. But you can see just enough to take the next step, and then the next, and then the next.

And sometimes, those steps lead you to unexpected places—to connections with others who have walked similar paths, to opportunities to use your story to help someone else find their way, to moments of joy you couldn't have imagined when you were lost in the maze of unanswerable questions. The Gift in the Scars If you're reading this and you're still in that place of desperately needing to understand—I get it. I really do. I'm not saying you should just "get over it" or "move on." I'm not saying understanding doesn't matter at all. I'm saying that waiting for complete understanding before you allow yourself to heal is like refusing to treat a wound until you know exactly what caused it. Sometimes, you need to address the injury first, even while the questions remain. And here's what I've found in my own journey: the scars I carry have become something I never expected—gifts. Not gifts I would have chosen, certainly. But gifts nonetheless, because they've allowed me to connect with others in their pain in ways I never could have otherwise. When someone tells me their story and says, "You probably don't understand," I can often say, truthfully, "Actually, I do." Not because our stories are identical, but because pain creates a language that transcends the specifics of our individual experiences. A Different Kind of Understanding Maybe that's the irony in all this. In letting go of my need to understand why my pain happened, I gained a different kind of understanding—one that connects me to others, one that lets me see beneath the surface of people's words to the hurt that often lives there. I don't have all the answers. I never will. But I've found something more valuable than answers: I've found purpose. I've found connection. I've found that my story—even with all its unanswered questions—can be a light for someone else still finding their way through the dark. If you're struggling with unanswerable questions right now, I won't tell you to just let them go. I know it's not that simple. But I will tell you this: don't let the absence of answers keep you from beginning to heal. Don't let the mysteries of the past rob you of the possibility of the future. What matters isn't that you understand everything that happened to you. What matters is that you're still here, still moving forward, still carrying your light even through the darkest nights. And sometimes, that's understanding enough.