Learning to Accept: Why Every “Why” Doesn’t Need an Answer

When I was a little girl, my favorite word was “why?” No matter what I was told, the first thing out of my mouth—or popping up in my head—was, “but why?”

My mom might say, “Okay Valerie, it’s time to get up for school. "And I would ask, “Why,

Mommy?

” Because you have to go to school,” she would urge.

"Why do I have to go to school?

” So you can learn and become smart and brilliant.”

I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful or a pest—I was simply an inquisitive child. The world felt like an amazing place filled with wonder.

I “why’d” my mom about everything:

Why are there so many stars in the sky?

Why are people homeless?

Why do cars need gas?

Why did she name me Valerie?

Why, why, why.

One day my mom said, “Sometimes, baby, there are no answers we will understand. It just is, and that’s okay too.” I don’t think I ever asked why quite the same way again, but it didn’t stop my curiosity about life and the people in it.

Even today, I find myself studying people and having deep thoughts about the ways of the world. The difference between that fascinated child and the woman I am now is that I finally understand what my mother meant: Sometimes there are no answers, and that’s okay too.

I believe that was the beginning of my journey toward acceptance.

Acceptance has always been hard for me. I would see things in broken people—mostly in my intimate relationships. Good things, deep things. I would enter a relationship with someone who carried so many red flags they could light up the sky, yet my eyes would focus on a tiny space in their heart that was loving and kind.

I would immediately pull out my invisible tool kit, believing I could enhance the good, remove the red flags, “rebuild” them into something whole—and then everything would be okay.

The problem was that I never accounted for their capacity or their willingness to be rebuilt.

Some people simply have pint-sized capacity, yet we want them to be gallon-sized people. But no matter how much you stretch, pour into, or try to expand a pint-sized container, it will never hold a gallon. And it may not even be because they don’t want to grow; it may simply be because that is not how they were designed.

For me—the lifelong “project builder”—that truth was hard to accept. I saw so much potential, and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t see it in themselves. But the answer is simple: their container is what it is.

I guess I’ve struggled with those same feelings about the world. I want to change the world. I want to pour as much love into it as possible, believing that if love were the primary focus, everything else would fall into place. There is nothing wrong with that belief, as long as I remember my own capacity.

I am not alone in my quest for the “why.” I think it shows up in so many ways. Scientists spend their entire lives trying to answer the “why":

Why is the world round?

Why does the sunshine?

Who else exists in the universe?

Why is there war?

Why persecution?

Why do bad things happen?

We look at people different from us and try to understand why, and when we don’t understand, we sometimes try to change them.

When someone we love passes away, our first instinct is “why?

"Why did they have to leave?

Why didn’t I know?

Why did God take them?

There is always a why.

Maybe we can blame everything on the very first “why,” if they are Christian believers—Eve’s curiosity about why God told them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:16) sparked a chain of events that still haunt us today.

Imagine the utopia we might all be living in if we were still those naive, innocent children who simply accepted the gifts of God without needing to know why.

My belief is that God knew—as Jack Nicholson famously said in A Few Good Men— “We can’t handle the truth.” Think about it, what have we done with the little knowledge we do have?

We’ve created division, wars, separation, inequity, judgment, hate, death, power-hungry leaders, and evil doers.

That’s why I try so hard not to judge anyone—because we never know everything about a situation. We see or hear something and immediately begin drawing conclusions, creating our own scenarios. Some of us even try to act as God’s PR team, believing we have the authority and permission to judge, correct, or determine how God's plan and God's children should be.

I believe that is a dangerous game. It implies full understanding and full capacity—something none of us truly have.

Today, I understand there is so much that I don’t understand—and that’s okay too.

So, my best path forward is Proverbs 3:5–6:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”

That is my journey to acceptance—acknowledging that my tiny mind couldn’t possibly understand even a millimeter of God’s mind. And that’s something that might surprise the many folks when they themselves have to stand in the judgment line believing they are ambassadors for Christ. For what if God’s response to them is simply, “What made you think you understood my mind?”

So, in all my ways, my focus is to acknowledge God. He has been the best director of my path thus far, and I have no reason to believe He will stop now.

So today, my people, let us practice more acceptance, more trust, and put away the whys.