What do you believe about karma?

I believe strongly in karma. I try to do all of the right things all the time (sometimes that doesn't work out), so I don't get whopped with seven times what I did.

My brother had a girlfriend that he was verbally and physically abusive to and he was also this way with me and one of my friends. He was driving me and my friend to her house after school (and after he'd just punched me in front of half the high school) and I told him that Haley (his girlfriend) would break up with him and he would go to jail and the army would discharge him (he's MP). Lo and behold, it all happened. A month later he was caught stealing money from his best friend's dad and he went to jail for four months and now owes nine thousand dollars to the man. His girlfriend broke up with him, he got fired, he almost had his head taken off by a barbed wire fence, he went to jail, the army is still considering discharging him, his newest ex-girlfriend just stole three hundred dollars from him, and his car broke down. Well, either my brother has all of the bad luck that the world can possibly bestow upon someone or karma truly does exist and it's kicking him in the rear. I hope you'll notice that his reprocussions were seven things. Weird, isn't it?

But I also do believe that horrible things happen to extremely good people. My cousin Justin was in the United States Marine Corps. and worked very hard to make sure other countries were doing good. He was also a policeman for four years and started up his own security business about five months before this last August. He had two beautiful children, Alayna and Corbin, and was married to my cousin Samantha. The terrible thing is that he had battled four different types of cancer in his life. Despite the good he did and still wanted to do (he wanted to join the Marines again and go to Iraq), he was diagnosed with cancer of the blood last year. He fought so hard. His cancer warped in June and turned into a type of cancer the doctors had never seen before and he was incurable. Justin passed away on August 2, 2008 and it was an extremely hard thing for my family. He was such a wonderful source of light for all of us and to have him go was so difficult. I myself am still suffering (as are the rest of the family) and I'm very angry about it. For a month after he passed I was so uncontrollably angry with everything, no matter how big or small, that it was extremely difficult for me to do anything. It just so happened that a concert at Lifelight Festival turned that around and God has managed to help me sifle through my anger. While it's still there and I still hurt every day that Justin's gone, it's also a little bit better.

My friend Hunter is eighteen years old. Three days before his eighteenth birthday he was diangosed with osteosarcoma (bone cancer). He has had his left leg amputated and has had numerous surgeries on his lungs, legs, and brain. He was in surgery on the morning on his birthday and missed the call from my class wishing him a happy birthday. We've had numerous fundraisers to help him pay for his treatment and we're continuing to do so and hope very much that Hunter will be with us for prom and graduation. Our school is very tiny and we've all spent the last thirteen years growing up with Hunter. To see him dying, hurts us all. He is one of the most lively people I know and I won't say anything different about him. He's very smart and full of energy and always up to smurf kick you and always has a smile on his face (even now). He is just this source of hope for me. He says that he feels so lucky, because he'll lay in the hospital and hear other kids crying and screaming and he feels so lucky that the treatment doesn't affect him like that. I can only say that he is a true hero in my eyes.

I do believe in karma. I do believe in bad energy infecting who you are and for it to come back on you. The only way to cleanse yourself of it is to change your attitude. But I also know that bad things happen to good people and why do they? What's the point of my cousin passing away or Hunter getting cancer or my friend Dominic having a heart attack at 22 and dying? What was the point of that 15 year old five years ago getting in a car accident and passing away? What was the point of my own mother getting killed in a car accident? I've no idea. I cannot answer why good people like Hunter, Justin, Brittany, Dominic, my mother, Jesus Christ, or Moses must suffer. I can't answer why Heath Ledger or Bernie Mac or Cassie Bernall or Rachel Joy Scott died. I just know that bad things happen to teach us lessons. At the time, we're angry and we're confused and we believe everything is against us and the last thing you want to hear is, "God has his reasons." When I first found out my mother was dead and the person told me, "God wanted his angel," I felt so angry. Why would he want my mother? She was mine and I was only two. What kind of sick, perverse maniac would do that? God.

I know how it is to not believe in that, but I know that no matter how hard it is to believe, it is God's doing. There's a lesson to be taught with every hardship. I never knew people who were more thankful for life or more patient and loving than those that I've known that have passed away. They are good people. But God wanted them back. He taught them to love and to give and to cherish each day and he felt it was time to bring them home. He gave them an eternity of pleasure for a few months/years of suffering. In the end, karma won. Good was rewarded with good and that's all I can believe in.