Over the past 4 years, as Randy has written posts for Our High Places, he often details what he calls God Winks. He and I first heard the term God Winks years and years ago when we became friends with a much older couple. Randy was still running our pressure washing service company. This couple hired him to clean their house and as was so often the case with Randy, a customer morphed into a friend. He had a special affinity for these folks and returned often after the first job was completed to help them out with other things, not for money, but because Randy just has a servant’s heart that connected with their hearts.
This couple gifted him with a book called When God Winks: How the Power of Coincidences Guide Your Life. I just ordered another copy of the book, the first one is long lost, probably in the tornado in 2003.
What struck us both so profoundly about God Winks is this: Many people think of things that randomly happen to them, people who cross their paths at certain junctures in their lives, series of events leading to an outcome that benefits or delights them as coincidences or synchronicity. But if you look at those things through the lens of our Creator who loves us and wants the best for us and who appears with just what we need when we need it, you see those random things, coincidences, as purposeful orchestrations by God. They are a beautiful echo of Jeremiah 29:11, “ “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
God works every day, run-of-the-mill miracles all the time. If we know about God Winks, if we look for them, we recognize them for what they are, and wowie zowie….that recognition does indeed give us hope and a future. Most important, it helps us develop an incredibly well-honed gratitude muscle. And gratitude is truly one of the most important elements of earthly happiness.
Randy is in the battle for his life from lung cancer that has metastasized to his brain, bones, and adrenal gland. He’s consciously aware that he may be in his last days, but he’s also consciously aware that, as we look back over the last year, there are countless God Winks that helped prepare us to handle the cancer diagnosis on February 2 and what’s happened since then. Let me tell you about as many of them as I can remember today.
Just the past couple of days manifested a God Wink of enormous proportion for us, something we never, ever though of or asked for, but may ease the financial considerations of whether or not I’ll be able to afford to stay in our house on just my income.
First, there was our whole year-long 50th anniversary celebration. Even though my mastectomy was right smack in the middle of that year, we were alive and celebrating being married 50 years. We planned and took that epic 8-week road trip with the embedded Alaskan cruise, then in December, for our actual 50th anniversary we took an eastern Caribbean cruise. The miracle of that year was that except for a few weeks after my surgery, we were both healthy and able to enjoy all the physical aspects of those celebration adventures.
Another miracle related to the anniversary road trip was all the old friends and family we got to see along the way. We hadn’t seen some of them for years. The chance to hug each of them in person all over the country before diagnosis is a priceless God Wink.
Another really big God Wink was getting our house in order, literally. For years we had been talking about updating the two bathroom showers and changing the mish-mash of flooring in the entire house to something much more modern and durable. We did one shower in February last year, and then the other in November. And then, in kind of a weird series of events, the flooring replacement came together very, very quickly and was done by December 31. Randy did a lot of the work on the showers himself, helping our very talented friend Bruce who constructs and remodels homes for a living. Those house projects, which were the last of everything we’d wanted to do to the interior, finished one month before the cancer diagnosis. Looking back on the timing of all of that, we’re putting that in the miracle category too.
And then there is the miracle of each of our friends who have come into our lives over the years and very recently. Friends and family (the ancillary miracle here is being born or married into that wonderful group) who are now here with us, fighting this battle with us, providing rock solid support to both of us, and praying on our behalf like the army of elite prayer warriors they are. There are individual miracle stories of how and when we met each of them, and the role they are assuming for us now. Those stories are amazing, some even unbelievable, but God knew EXACTLY what He was doing, even way back to 1978 when our paths crossed and intertwined with our friends Keith and Carla, who you hear a lot about on this blog, and who (Keith) was our Guardian on Honor Flight.
Honor Flight was a huge miracle in itself!
The final miracle I want to mention today is my discovery, quite unexpectedly while researching whether the VA will pay for a nursing home if that’s necessary toward the end of Randy’s journey home, that both Randy and I are almost certainly eligible for some VA disability payments under a law called the PACT Act passed in 2022. It has to do with exposure to Agent Orange on Guam way back when, and the fact that we both have cancer, presumptively caused by that exposure. I wasn’t looking for any kind of financial benefit for either one of us, yet, if I read it all correctly, here it is. In the end, it gives me great peace of mind that I will easily be able to continue to make Grathen’s Last Resort a place of peace and love for all who want to enjoy some time in Florida.
Every miracle is a point of deep humility and gratitude. We look at all of these things in wonder and amazement of God’s faithfulness and perfect timing.
God works miracles in our lives every single day. Make it a habit to look for them as they occur, or to look back on something that happened and realize that yup, that was a miracle for sure.
P.S. We began hospice yesterday for Randy. Everyone we know who’s ever had experience with hospice has urged us to take advantage of it as soon as we can. Starting Hospice doesn’t mean we’re giving up that God could provide another miracle, it’s taking advantage of the help for getting care during this difficult stage of life Randy and I are in. If he gets better, he can come off hospice. The truth is that right now he’s in absolutely no pain and is taking no pain medication. I’m not sure what that means. But it’s also true that he’s not eating, is down to 135 pounds, and is weaker by the day. Still his attitude is excellent, he’s relatively clear headed, and his smile just lights up my day. That smile is a God Wink for me!
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