“Alles gebeurt om een reden”

“Alles gebeurt om een reden” is Eva’s belief that suffering and chance carry a purpose. The phrase first gives her a way to interpret the loss of Lieve; later, it helps her present the possibility of a child conceived with Steef as something that may be meant to happen. Across these uses, consolation shades into justification: the same faith that makes pain seem meaningful can also make a consequential choice seem beyond question.

Meaning After Loss

Eva argues that she must move forward differently rather than return to the couple’s former, conventional patterns. She casts the pain of the previous year as a lesson they failed to heed: in her account, losing Lieve and meeting Steef and Rebecca are connected events, each part of what life was trying to show them. The phrase thus turns bereavement into a story of instruction and purpose, rather than leaving it as an arbitrary misfortune.

Peter, who narrates the exchange, responds with a question but keeps another unspoken. His skepticism becomes sharper when he wonders whether Eva is repeating Hetty’s way of speaking. That comparison places the expression between sincere conviction and borrowed doctrine: Eva presents it as her reason for moving on, while Peter hears an echo of someone else’s spiritual certainty.

Chance, Effort, and Acceptance

Eva’s recollection of pregnancy exposes the strain beneath this faith. She had approached becoming a mother with intense preparation, following rules and building her daily life around the expected baby. When events nevertheless went wrong, her effort could not explain the outcome. She contrasts the expectation that diligence should protect a pregnancy with the unevenness of luck, concluding that some people seem fortunate while others suffer repeated misfortune.

In that account, the expression does not promise that events will be fair or that effort will control them. Instead, it offers a way to live with the gap between care and outcome. Rebecca’s advice about letting go informs Eva’s thinking, but the resulting belief remains in tension with the meticulous control Eva once sought: if everything has a reason, failed expectations can be recast as lessons after the fact.

Use in the Reproductive Plan

Rebecca applies the idea to the prospect of Steef becoming the father of Eva’s child. She rejects the description of their plan as trapping anyone and frames Eva and Steef’s meeting as purposeful: if he becomes the father, it was meant to be; if not, it was not. She comforts Eva by wiping away a tear and insists that a child conceived this way would be made and received with love, contrasting that vision with conception in a laboratory.

Here the phrase becomes more than a response to past suffering. It lends a sense of destiny to a future reproductive choice whose outcome is uncertain, helping Rebecca reassure Eva while also making the plan appear sanctioned by fate. The expression’s central ambiguity remains: it can help the characters endure what they cannot control, but it can also soften scrutiny of choices they are making now.