You can Choose What Gets to Land: A “Godwink” Moment

Recently, our family went through a really challenging time when my oldest son was in an accident, just days before starting his freshman year in college, that resulted in him losing the top half of his index finger. The accident itself was traumatic and painful for him and the following time healing and learning to adapt to life with a significantly changed hand has been a long road. Initially, I stayed in a nearby hotel to help him with wound care, follow up appointments, and pain control, not to mention just trying to help him get acclimated to being a freshman in college. It was a lot. It was overwhelming. It was unbelievably sad and challenging for him and so my heart hurt for him incessantly.

Not surprisingly, we were both struggling. No matter how much you know about mental health, the reality is that life will throw some awful things at everyone at some point. We will all face terrible losses, setbacks, and challenges we feel completely overwhelmed by. When those moments arise, the one thing that is assured is that the only way through them… is to go through them. It is so natural and normal to want something to just take the pain away. To make the hard situation easier, to have assurance that everything will turn out ok, but the reality is that none of us get that assurance. Sadly, we all know somewhat deep down that other bad things can happen. That there might not be the happy ending we are longing for BUT there is hope. There is always hope. Hope helps us see that there is another side to the story, that even if we don’t get what we think we need, there are still things that we can control and that can help us through the storms of life.

So, what can you do in the dark times of life. There are a lot of strategies to help with trauma, grief, and loss… and I’m sure I’ll hit on lots of strategies in future blogs. But today, I want to share with you the thing that helped me most through this season.  And I came across this strategy in a complete “Godwink” moment.

One thing that has always been deeply therapeutic for me is walking, lots of walking. I walk an average of 10k steps a day.  I’m going on my third year of keeping that average for the entire year. Yes, I miss days here and there, but I have lots of days where I walk 20k steps to make sure I keep up my step count. My walks help ground me and give me time to be outside.  My walks take a lot of time (usually about an hour and twenty minutes a day to get me to my 10k goal). I use that time to pray, be quiet, listen to books or podcasts, or just listen to music that soothes my soul. Sometimes it’s just a perfect time to catch up on phone calls. Walking is hands down the best strategy I have for healing, gaining perspective, and remembering that the sun will come up tomorrow and that I will hopefully have another day to get out there and try and make a difference in the world.

So, what does my walking have to do with my Godwink moment? And, what’s a Godwink moment you might also be wondering? According to Google, it’s “An event or personal experience, often identified as coincidence, so astonishing that it is seen as a sign of divine intervention, especially when perceived as the answer to a prayer”. So, I want to share with you my Godwink moment and what I learned that has helped carry me through this season.

As I mentioned, I was completely distraught trying to help my son and not sure what the best thing to do was in any given moment and how he would get through this situation. About a week in, as reality was settling in, I forced myself out of the hotel I was staying in and started walking again. I was behind on my steps and knew I needed some clarity to be of any real help to my son. So, I fell back on the habit I have been forming for the past few years. I started walking. I wasn’t familiar with the area and didn’t want to be far from the hotel and my car in case I needed to get to my son quickly, so I just started walking around the block the hotel was on, over and over. On one lap, I noticed something shiny on the edge of the sidewalk in the grass. I didn’t think much of it but as the days wore on, two weeks later actually, I finally decided to bend down and look at what was in the grass. It had literally been there for weeks at this point with no one disturbing it and just shining in the sun day after day. When I picked it up it was a lovely silver bracelet with an airplane charm on it. I couldn’t believe it.

One of the analogies I often use in therapy is to remind people that negative thoughts are like airplanes flying by and that we have to act like air traffic controllers deciding what we allow to land. The number of negative thoughts I was battling at that moment was overwhelming. Will my son be OK, will he make it through school, how will I transition back home and out of this hotel? Is he doing what he needs to do to get healthy? How will we pay for all of this? It literally was like a parade through my head at all times of the day, often waking me up in the middle of the night to keep disturbing my every moment.

And then there was my Godwink, the answer to my prayer, the reminder that I could control which thoughts I would allow to land. When I remembered that I didn’t have to listen to and acknowledge every negative thought that went through my head it made room for me to remember a lot of positive things. I could remember that he is healthy and will recover, that he has wonderful friends, and is curious and motivated to go to college, that I am strong and capable and will find a way to help him through this. I needed that reminder that our feelings come from our thoughts and if we let the negative thoughts land over and over, we are crowding the runway and all the thoughts that bring hope and possibility have no place to land. I picked up that bracelet and put it on. I’m assuming after weeks of being there the owner had no idea where to look to find it but if anyone ever reads this and knows it was their bracelet, I am happy to return it. In the meantime, I wear it daily to remind myself that I can choose what thoughts I allow to land. As I share my story, I am so grateful that I received this gift from God to remember that we need to make room for hope and possibilities, especially in the stormy seasons of life.