​Web extra: Excerpt from "I'm Just a Person" by Tig Notaro

God Never Gives You More Than You Can Handle

I once saw a video of someone crossing themselves as they jumped from one of the Twin Towers before it collapsed. And I was certain that, if there was a "God," they must, occasionally, give people more than they can handle.

I had heard the phrase "God never gives you more than you can handle" my whole life and I believed it in the same way I believed that when one door closes, another one opens. But both of these truisms come up short. What if you don't have a door, or what if you do, but your door never fully opens?

Also, prayer can be narcissistic. If a mother believes that God has answered her prayers because her child's soccer team won the game, she must also believe that God ignored the other team's prayers. Just like that particular God must have ignored the prayers of those who were being beaten and raped. But hey, maybe those individuals could just handle more. On the off chance that there is a God who can hear prayers, but can't hear all of them at once, then the people who are praying for goals to be scored, good seats, and sunshine are clogging up the prayer line.

It's like the song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" which describes how lucky we are to not be in Africa, "Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears / And the Christmas bells that ring there / Are the clanging chimes of doom," and tells the listener to "thank God it's them, instead of you." I mean, what on earth? Even when I was a child, this stuck out to me. I loved the tune and the catchiness of the lyrics, but when I really concentrated on what I was singing, I thought about how that prayer might go: "God, thank you so much for making other people starve to death and not me."

During my wretched four months, I heard "God never gives you more than you can handle" way more than I could handle. But I can assure you that C-diff, the death of my mother, and breast cancer were each, individually, more than I could handle. For all of them to essentially be happening at the same time--peppered with a breakup--put me way beyond my limit. I mean, it really felt like enough when I had pneumonia. If that had been all that happened to me in 2012, then I would be saying, "Holy cow, I had pneumonia in 2012."

As soon as my cancer was in remission, I started hearing, "God is good," perhaps as a knee-jerk response to good news, or because it was certain well-meaning people's response to God answering their prayers that I would be okay. If the cancer had spread and was going to kill me, I highly doubt that the news would have elicited a "God is good." Instead, I would die and the same people would say, "God called her home." Does God have a great big plan that we are all watching unfold? If that's the case, why did my mother have to get clubbed in the head while she was being called home? I guess this is one of those times when God works in mysterious ways?

Sometimes, when I heard, "God is good," I imagined two patients lying next to each other in a cancer center. One of them is being told that they are in remission and their visitor announces that God has answered their prayers. What if the nearby terminal patient interrupted to ask them, "What about me and my prayers?" Would anyone really look at someone who is dying and in physical pain and say, "I guess your prayers went un-answered, but just remember, sometimes unanswered prayers are a gift"?

My biggest problem with people who talk about God and prayers is how confident they are about how it all works out until it doesn't work out. This kind of willful blindness astounds me. If something is a miracle when it works, then when it doesn't work that should not just be ignored; it should be questioned. The opposite of a miracle is not nothing. It's totally not a miracle.

If I were dying and someone who believes in a God who can hear prayers turned to me and said, "Unfortunately, Tig, God didn't hear your prayers, and this is a gift," I would be thrilled. I might be dying, but at least I would have lived long enough to finally get the chance to witness a person bold enough to not waver in what they claim to believe simply because it's convenient to do so.

Since I received my official certificate marking me as an expert of "What to Say to Someone Enduring Sadness and Despair"--which I can assure you is hung next to my framed and adorably nibbled GED that nobody, except literally my cat, has ever given a shit about--I feel qualified to tell you that it's important to assess what that distressed person's needs may be. Is this a person who wants to hear about God and religion right now? Or ever? Or is this someone who only wants a sounding board? Having to comfort someone with a deadly disease is in no way a highly sought-after position and most people are probably doing the best they can. I am certain they were for me. But what I needed to hear most was something that was connected to the moment--to undeniable reality. When I heard, "Wow, that sounds really hard," or even an awkward "I don't know what to say . . ." it was tremendously comforting. I felt as though someone was really talking to me and considering what was actually going on, and, most importantly, was willing to succumb to the moment instead of covering it up with a one-size-fits all platitude. I imagine that most people in my situation, regardless of their religious beliefs, would want the opportunity to express the depths of their fears, concerns, and questions without being showered with blind and deaf positivity.

When I was afraid I might die, my emotions needed out, they didn't need to be squelched with false assurance. In case there really is a God, and He-She-It didn't judge this book by its cover and is reading this, let me be very clear: Losing my ability to eat food--and more than twenty pounds--as well as losing my mother; losing my breasts; having stitched and scabbed incisions across my chest that made it almost impossible to be hugged or to move; being unable to lift my arms until I was able to rebuild excised muscle tissue; being terrified of dying, and if I lived, of never working again; and going through a breakup while having constant stabbing pains in my gut was, ultimately, more than I could handle.

From I'm Just A Person by Tig Notaro. Copyright 2016 by Tig Notaro. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.