Yesterday morning I interviewed a woman for my upcoming book, When God Sees Your Tears. Amanda is one who has experienced many tears, especially in the last year. She and her two and a half year-old- daughter had to suddenly go on with life after her husband, a pastor, was shot and killed in his own church last year.

Throughout our interview, this 31-year-old woman could have vented about a beautiful life cut short, about a marriage interrupted, about a daughter who will grow up without her beloved daddy. She could have had an edge of bitterness from having her husband ripped away from her just as they were beginning to realize their dreams together. She could have sworn off service to God for the rest of her days because of what it ultimately cost her, her husband and their family.

But throughout the conversation her words sounded more like a soft symphony of trust, unwavering faith and … hope.

“God definitely orchestrated that part of it,” she said, as she recounted precious details of her husband’s last moments before slipping into eternity. “I definitely think God had been preparing our hearts for this,” she told me, as she recounted conversations between her and her husband in the weeks prior to him being taken from this earth.

After hanging up the phone with Amanda, I could not help but wonder if I would I be that prepared, that peaceful, that trusting, if tragedy were to suddenly strike my own family.

My only daughter, Dana, has been on a service project in the country of Kosovo for the past two weeks. I will not hear from her again until she arrives back in the U.S. in another seven days. What if I were to get the devastating news that what is most precious to me is now in God’s hands … and I will  never touch hers again this side of heaven? It’s difficult to even imagine. Yet there are those who have had to walk that path of losing a child, a husband, a loved one … and those of us who wonder if we someday will.

Tragedy could strike any of us at any time. We hear of it happening to others and at times we wonder when our day will come. Pain is a part of life because we live in a fallen world. But how we handle what is dealt us in this life determines our legacy. Will we trust that whatever we go through, God has gone before us and will continue to carry us ’til our journey on this earth is over?

I want to be one, like Amanda, who is able to say (as Job once did): ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him …”

So, today I ask myself: Where is my heart when it comes to trusting my Lord with ALL things – both the expected and the unexpected? Where is yours?

God, solidify my trust in You so that when the unthinkable happens, NOTHING comes between the two of us.