It is the Jewish New Year, and I’ve spent the last two mornings in holiday services. The familiar words and melodies are ingrained, they have been a part of my life since childhood and there is a comfort in that constancy and consistency. Much can and does change but these traditions of faith carry on.

What strikes me every year is the language of the prayer around the year ahead. We read words that tell us that “On Rosh Hashanah it is written” and that “On Yom Kippur it is sealed,” referring to who shall live and who shall die, who shall know good fortune and who shall know tragedy. And it tells us that “repentance, charity and prayer” can, perhaps, change the course and nature of this decree.

As I do every time I hear those words, I wonder if, indeed, our fates are pre-ordained, if the decisions have already been made by some higher power. And as quickly as I wonder that, I reject it. I do not believe that our fates are out of our hands nor do I believe that there is a reason that bad things, terrible things, happen.

When I first faced traumatic loss, and tragedy, in my own life, a dear friend gave me the book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” written by Rabbi Harold Kushner. Rabbi Kushner, writing about his own personal struggles and tragedies, shares his conclusion that it is not God who controls the bad things that happen. But, rather, the role of God is to help us to survive these things and find hope and consolation.

Sadly, I have had to return to this book on more than one occasion in my life. Things happen without reason, loss with no warning, grief that knows no boundaries. I find comfort in Kushner’s message that, in truth, things just happen. There is no giant divine chess board on which we are all pieces. But, the sense that there is something greater than ourselves—whether you think of it as God or spirit or the Universe or something else entirely—that allows us, enables us to move forward.

As we face those moments in life that try us and threaten to overwhelm us, we have a choice as to how we continue to live. We can just exist or we can embrace the life we have, carry our memories and find our footing and our path. We may not be fully deciding “who shall live and who shall die” but we are deciding, every day, that the life we live looks like, what it means to ourselves and to others and how we choose, if we choose, to fill our full hearts.