I have been reading “Divine Alignment: How Godwink Moments Guide Your Journey” from Squire Rushnell, and this book literally is what’s happening in my life right now. It hit me on the very first page when he says, “Each of us is born with a built-in GPS. God’s Positioning System. Right from birth, we come equipped with a highly sophisticated navigational package that – through an internal voice of intuition and godwinks – divinely aligns us with people, as well as events, who assist us in reaching our destiny and keep us from losing our way.”
This whole life, I’ve had my own personal Navigator in God. So have you. However, it’s up to us whether we listen to the GPS and follow the journey. For years I’ve been asking myself “what is my purpose in life?” I think we all ask ourselves that at some point in life. I’ve always felt like I was meant to do something bigger yet didn’t know what that was.
And then Nikolai died.
Instead of running from God, I ran to Him full tilt. My heart was broken. I was broken. I didn’t know where to turn to make sense of what happened, except to God. The immediate weeks after Nikolai took his life, I started to feel peace, but not in the sense you think. It was more like someone putting their hand on my shoulder and telling me it was going to be okay, and it was a constant. And because I had decided therapy wasn’t for me, God was the only one I was talking to. All the raw emotions I was feeling – the guilt, the sadness, He got it all. Through that process of grieving with Him, I came to slowly realize my journey had just begun.
My first godwink was when a colleague of mine called me up one day and asked to go to lunch. Julie and I had talked to each other many times at Chamber of Commerce events; however, we weren’t on a level of hey, let’s have lunch, outside of business. Something in my gut told me to go to lunch with her.
That lunch has changed my life. Julie proceeded to tell me that day that she felt I had something to share with the world and she wanted to help me do it. Would I be open to putting myself out there in a blog to help others cope with their grief? I said yes. In a few whirlwind weeks, Julie not only set up a blog platform for me, secured a domain and built a website and social media platforms for me, she also found businesses to sponsor my blog to help with the costs of all that was about to occur. Divine alignment happened and thankfully we both acted upon the godwinks that were presented to us.
My second huge godwink came at a networking event for the Waterford Area Chamber of Commerce. I had been thinking for weeks prior to that event that there was something even bigger than my blog, bigger than all things onadragonflyswings that I needed to be doing to really make a difference. The minute State Representative Andrea Schroeder stepped foot through the door, I knew I had to connect with her. I was drawn to her for some reason and decided to just go for it. We exchanged contact information, but honestly, I really didn’t expect a call back.
In less than a week, Andrea reached back out to me. She had talked to people in both school districts and was ready to move forward with my idea to put the suicide crisis hotline numbers on the back of 6-12th grade student ID cards. Not only that, her and her husband paid for all the stickers and got them to the right people in the two school districts to make sure conversations were being held around them. I then told her I wanted this to be required of all school districts. Guess what… she’s making that happen. We are only a Senate vote away from making the Save Our Students Bill a law. Did you also know that Andrea shares her birthday with Nikolai? Did you also know that her daughter’s birthday is on Nikolai’s death date? These are not coincidences… these are godwinks. This is Divine Alignment.
In the book, Rushnell is talking about the death of a young filmmaker, Zaki Gordon. He states, “You are still struggling with the tragic loss of Zaki’s life, asking yourself why a loving God would allow such a bright light to be extinguished so horribly. But we can make some suppositions. Suppose God sees things from a wider perspective than you and I. Imagine that we are like ants at the bottom of a giant redwood tree in the midst of a great forest while God, from above, can see everything with great clarity. If that’s the case, would it not stand to reason that something that doesn’t make sense to us, way down here in the weeds, actually makes perfect sense to God, as He sees it, as part of His perfect plan?”
Through the inner compass of Zaki’s dad, God was able to implant ideas, allowing his spirit to prevail, while touching the lives of thousands. Look up the Zaki Gordon Institute if you want to more about this particular story. However, my point is, without my Navigator (God) and my willingness to put on my bravery boots and act on some of the godwinks, we may not have onadragonflyswings.com. We may not have a Save Our Students Bill. I’m listening all the time. I know there is so much more in store for me, all in God’s timing. I just have to be open to all the godwinks.
I could go back the last 12, even 24 months of my life and see all the godwinks placed in front of me. I am definitely on a guided journey constantly asking, now what? There is much work to be done in the world of suicide prevention and mental health awareness. My impact right now seems so insignificant some days. I’ve always said if I can help just one child, one family. I know I have at least done that, yet I want to save them all.
One baby step at a time, following my GPS.
Let me leave you with one final quote from Rushnell, “Day in and day out you nonchalantly encounter one person after another as you bound from one event to the next, casually accepting life as a series of accidents. Only when you stop to open your mind to the immense possibilities of Divine Alignment do you begin to see the marvelous connections and invisible threads that connect you from one person to another. You begin to understand that your life is not an accident at all.”
Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash
