When life throws at us circumstances we can’t understand, we have two choices: question God or trust Him. Lisa Beamer learned that lesson–twice.

Lisa is the wife of 9-11 hero Todd Beamer, who, with other passengers on the infamous United Airlines Flight 93, took control of the plane long enough to crash it to the ground instead of allowing terrorists to fly into the U.S. Capitol. Lisa was left with two darling boys and a baby girl on the way.

After the crash, Lisa’s mind drifted back to when her father died quite suddenly when she was 15. At the time she had wrestled with the thought, God, you could have prevented this tragedy if you had wanted to! Why didn’t you?

Then one day a college administrator faced her with the reality that “for whatever reason, [God] let the natural course of things take place that day. Knowing what the consequences were going to be…, he nonetheless allowed it to happen. Maybe it’s time for [her] to accept that.”[1]

Verses Lisa had recently read from the Bible came back to her:
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! (Romans 11:33-36).

Lisa thought to herself, Who are you to question God? You think you deserve a happy life and get angry when it doesn’t always happen. She made a conscious decision to stop questioning God and start trusting Him, not knowing that one day she would need to lean on that decision again with the tragedy of her husband’s death.

No, we don’t understand all that happens to us. But we can make the decision to trust God instead of question.  It’s the only way to peace.

[1] Lisa Beamer, with Ken Abraham, Let’s Roll (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2002), 82, 83.