Fate, free will, and serenity

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

- The Serenity Prayer

When I was planning my daughter's memorial, I had to ask for recommendations for someone to speak at the service. My family doesn't attend church or anything similar, so we didn't have anyone in mind. A man and woman were both recommended to me. I spoke to both, and asked both how it makes sense for me to accept that my daughter's death was God's will and that I'm supposed to then rely on God to help me through my grief.

The woman didn't really have an answer. The man told me that a child's death is not God's will, that it was the result of her free will, but that God's will was in all the people who had come to help us through it. At the time, I liked that he had an answer. He performed the service and did a wonderful job.

I've since thought about free will versus fate a lot. The book The Shack (not terribly well-written, more Christian than it thinks it is, and contains some good ideas for anyone) helped me a lot in my thinking. I also watched a TV show recently (Flash Forward, if you're interested) in which a priest says people often wonder about fate versus free will, but that in reality, it's fate and free will working together.

It's the same as the idea behind the serenity prayer--there are things in life we can control, and things we can't. The only way to serenity/sanity/recovery is to try to acknowledge and accept which is which. We all make choices based on the information at hand, as well as our experiences and understanding of this world. And I think that's the most we can ask of ourselves and each other.