There comes a time—I don’t care how tough you think you are—when we all just need a hug.
It could be a day when the bottom falls out of your plans like a soggy cardboard box unceremoniously spilling its contents on the floor.
It could be a day when the pink slip you dreaded is in the envelope.
It could be a day when weariness and disappointment just bring you to tears.
We all have those days. We feel unwanted, unworthy, or unloved.
Have you ever noticed that’s often the time when a little bright experience bounces into your day? Just there for the enjoying, for the brightening, to help you feel like you are worthy, wanted, and not alone?
See if some of the following stories replicate your own experiences of receiving godwinks of comfort at just the right moment and for no other purpose than to deliver you a personal heavenly hug.
“You can never wear red, because you’ve got red hair,” taunted her classmate, sounding like Lucy in the Charlie Brown cartoons.
Bethany Skillen wondered how the mean-spirited words of an eleven-year-old, spoken years before, could have such an impact upon her. Yet here she was, a young wife and mother, thirty years old, still haunted by the snotty comments of a sixth-grade classmate.
She was feeling defiant. She could wear red if she wanted to!
She needed to feel defiant. Two days ago she had been crushed.
Having a second child quite so soon didn’t sound like a good idea at first. Jamie was still studying for his PhD at Cornell, and the income of a teaching assistant just wasn’t enough. But once the doctor confirmed the pregnancy, Bethany and Jamie were elated. She enthusiastically started telling everyone.
When Bethany was pregnant with Sam, now one-and-a-half, she heeded the advice that you shouldn’t mention your condition to others for the first thirteen weeks because that’s when most miscarriages occur. But Sam was born without a hitch, and this time she wanted people to know.
When she learned that she had miscarried her baby, it was devastating.
She cried for two days, feeling such a terrible sense of mourning. Her baby had died before she could get to know it, hold it, love it.
Bethany had told her mom—her best friend—no, she didn’t have to make that six-hour trip from Martha’s Vineyard to Ithaca to be with her. Bethany thought she could handle this on her own, but truth be known, she really wanted her mom’s hug.
Now it was time to pull herself together. “I’ve got to get out,” she said.
Bethany and little Sam headed for the Target store. She didn’t have much money—$20 and some change, left over from a Christmas gift. She was strolling the aisles, just looking.
Then it struck her.
“I can wear red if I want to!”
In fact, what she’d always wanted was a pair of red shoes. Yeah . . . red Mary Janes . . . the kind she once saw Dorothy wearing in The Wizard of Oz. Of course, fat chance she could find red Mary Janes in her size for about twenty bucks.
Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.1
—JEAN KERR
Bethany turned the corner and almost instantly encountered her blessing. There, on a markdown table, her eyes focused on a pair of red shoes—Mary Janes—in her size!
Quickly she slipped off her shoes and tried on the red ones.
Ahh . . . this must be how Cinderella felt, she thought. They fit perfectly.
Oh, oh . . . check the price.
Bethany’s mouth opened involuntarily.
The price was $21.50. But that wasn’t what floored her. Boldly imprinted on the inside of the beautiful red shoes was the designer name: Bethany.
That morning, she had desperately wanted a hug from her mother. Instead, she’d gotten a hug from her Father. God winked at her in a moment of lonely grieving by delivering a small miracle of comfort.
Red shoes with her own name inside.
LITTLE CONNECTIONS, BIG LIFT
Making sense out of senseless things is one of the tasks we are all called on to perform from time to time.
When a little godwink shows up serendipitously in your life, like Bethany’s red shoes, try to resist your left brain’s demand for rational reasoning—just accept it as a little message from above, saying: “Hey kid, everything is going to be okay.”
Ellen Pall’s mother died young.
It was young for both of them.
Her mother, Josephine Blatt Pall, was forty-five when a rare form of anemia sadly took her life.
Ellen was only seven.
Memories of her mother were elusive. Ellen knew her mother had been an artist, a writer, and thought of herself as a Bostonian, which is where Josephine grew up. Truth be known, Ellen deeply wished she’d known her mother more.
Ellen was raised by her father, stepmother, and Steffi, her older sister by nine years. Ellen studied English and French at the University of California at Santa Barbara and moved to New York in 1984. She already had written eight books and was to become a prolific author of mysteries, literary novels, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times.
As a new New Yorker, Ellen was thrilled to write to her sister, Steffi, about a lovely apartment she had found in Greenwich Village—a narrow, four-story building at 288 West 12th Street.
“It’s covered with ivy and has a little plaque on the front saying it was built in 1848,” she wrote. “You would love it.”
Steffi wrote back, recalling that their mother had once lived in Greenwich Village, too, before they were born.
“I’ll get in touch with Mother’s old friend, Debbie Sankey, and find out where,” said Steffi.
Ellen set about turning the little apartment into a home. There was a living room with a fireplace, a skylight in the kitchen, and one window looked into a courtyard.
Before long, Steffi excitedly telephoned with a note in hand: “Listen to this! Debbie Sankey wrote that she was Mother’s roommate in 1938, and she says they had an apartment on West 12th Street.”
Debbie said that she couldn’t be sure of the street number, but it was a narrow building across the street from a restaurant, the Beatrice Inn.
“I seem to have the number 288 West 12th in my head,” Debbie wrote. Ellen was flabbergasted. Could it be that forty-six years apart, she and her mother had rented an apartment in the same tiny New York City building?
Hanging up with her sister, Ellen rushed to a carton of her mother’s old papers and memorabilia that she had kept. She pawed through penny postcards, letters on yellowing paper, and various unpublished writings.
Then her fingers grasped exactly what she was looking for—confirmation—a poem with her mother’s name and address on the cover sheet: “Jo Blatt, 288 W. 12th St.”
Unbelievable, she thought, scribbling her innermost feelings into her journal on the night of the great discovery: “I got chills and tears and tremors. It can’t be mere coincidence, yet it’s unlikely to be anything else.”
Whatever the cause of the mystery, she concluded: “It’s one of those rare circumstances that seem to give life some incontrovertible order, and the fact that my mother opened these doors, passed by this railing, pleases me very much.”
By this extraordinary godwink, she was “comforted and reassured that she had landed in the right place.”
Oh yes! Across the street, the Beatrice Inn was still open for business. Think of it . . . she had dined where her mother had surely dined.
“Daddy, I’m not looking up people I’ve never met,” said Natalie.
“Just look,” said her father, Ara Garibian, excited that his college-aged daughter was spending a semester in Paris. He pointed to an old black-and-white photo, trimmed in white, ragged edges, glued into a tattered photo album.
“These little girls would be grown by now,” he continued unabashed, advising his daughter that there might be family members living in France.
“First of all, Daddy, I’m too shy to go knocking on people’s doors. Secondly, I’m going there to study.”
It turned out that Natalie’s first two months in Paris were nothing like she expected. She was overwhelmed with the challenges of language and the loneliness for home. She wrestled with the benefits of quitting, while fearing the shame of failure.
One Sunday morning she was drawn to a quaint Armenian church, tucked among the boutiques on a famous Parisian boulevard. Perhaps being among people who spoke her first language, Armenian, would make her feel less homesick.
She took a seat out of the way, on a chair that was set at the end of a pew. But she was soon to discover that everyone spoke French. Still out of place, she thought, as the service wound on and on. She looked around, considering the option of getting up and slipping out early. Not a good idea . . . too disturbing.
Going down the aisle, an older woman looking for a seat passed Natalie. As she returned up the aisle, several people spoke to her in French, offering a seat. She ignored them.
As she approached, Natalie stood and spoke to her in Armenian.
“Would you like to sit down?”
The woman nodded and Natalie withdrew nearby, tucking herself under a stone archway.
The service continued.
Natalie caught the old woman glancing at her.
Intermittently, Natalie stole looks back. She studied the character of the woman’s countenance. She admired that the woman held to the old customs of the church, covering her head with a lace scarf. Most younger people, including herself, were not doing that.
As parishioners solemnly filed to the front of the church for communion, the old woman turned to Natalie.
“You’re not from here, are you?” she asked in Armenian.
“No. How did you know?” whispered Natalie.
“You spoke to me in Armenian. I don’t speak French. Where are you from?”
“Florida,” smiled Natalie.
“Florida . . . we have family there,” brightened the old woman, “nephews—Sarkis and Dikran . . .”
Suddenly Natalie knew what she was going to say. She blurted out, “Ara!”
“Yes . . . Ara,” said the old woman, her eyes widening.
“That’s my dad!”
“I knew you were someone special,” said the woman, her face wrinkling joyfully, her eyes welling.
They were unaware they had been speaking so loudly. People in front were turning to shush them. But others had been listening and now they, too, were stifling tears.
“I’ve been looking for your father for a long, long time,” said the woman. “I’m your Aunt Arev. Before your father could find his way to America, he stayed with me in Aleppo, Syria . . . but we never knew what happened to him.”
After church, Natalie walked her great aunt to the bus stop. She promised to come to dinner that evening to meet Aunt Arev’s daughters, two of the little girls in the black-and-white photo, now grown.
Then she rushed to a pay phone and hurriedly dialed home.
“Daddy! You’ll never guess what happened!”
She couldn’t wait to tell him Auntie Arev’s last words uttered in disbelief in Armenian.
“It’s God’s work. It’s all God’s work.”
YOU’VE BEEN THERE
You’ve been in Natalie’s shoes at one time or another. In a new environment—a different school or job—where you felt out of place and uncomfortable. You wanted to flee to a place of greater familiarity and comfort. Yet you were held there by a sense of obligation or possible embarrassment if you were to leave.
I will fear no evil;
for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
—PSALM 23:4 NKJV
God senses these moments in your life. And if you are open to receiving them, He sends you messages of reassurance—godwinks—designed to bring you hugs of comfort at those times of uncertainty.
Sammy was a cute little mutt. Kind of a skinny Westie, I think.
I would see Sammy excitedly pulling on his owner’s leash—glad to be out of the New York apartment where he lived on East 79th Street—to take his morning walk.
As I waited to put my son on the school bus, I’d first say hello to Sammy and then to his owner, Richard Temtchine.
Sammy’s name was pronounced “Sammy.” Richard’s name was pronounced “Ree-chard.” He was French—an independent film producer. I enjoyed his musical, French accented “Good morning” almost as much as seeing Sammy trying to pull this grown man onto the street faster than he wanted to go.
As was the case every day, Sammy went jogging in Central Park with Richard. They were running quite some distance from home, at 109th Street. Because Richard knew Sammy always stayed very close to him, particularly in strange places, he took Sammy off his leash. Ahhh. This was always a treat for Sammy. The freedom to scamper! But not too far. Oh no, he’d stay close to Richard.
What no one anticipated was a sudden appearance by the tough creature that controlled that area of Central Park: a huge Doberman, the kind Disney would cast as the typical “bad-guy” dog. As the Doberman burst from the shadows—snarling, barking, and baring teeth, demanding to know why this skinny little dog was in his territory—Sammy did exactly what you or I would have done. He bolted. He ran and ran and ran. He had no idea where he was going because, as a city dog, he generally went to places only when on his owner’s leash. The only territory Sammy was familiar with was the block or two near Richard’s 79th Street apartment.
Richard was heartsick. He looked everywhere. He dreaded going home, facing his wife, Jill, with the terrible news that Sammy was lost. Worse was the prospect of telling their nine-year- old daughter, Chloe, when she returned from school.
“But he has a name tag,” said Jill in a voice choked with emotion. “Perhaps somebody will find him and call us.”
Richard shrugged. The prospects of someone stopping and looking at Sammy’s collar just seemed improbable at the time.
But he had to take action. He enlisted friends and laid out assignments for each person to search a specific quadrant of Central Park. They would rendezvous back at the apartment, hopefully, with good news before Chloe got home at 3:00 P.M.
The searchers spread out. They looked and looked. Up one pathway of the park and down another, they called out “Sammy, Sammy!” By 2:45 P.M., the searchers reassembled at the apartment, each bearing a dejected countenance and with nothing to report.
The housekeeper had left a note. Someone had called.
Richard dialed the phone.
“Bonjour . . .” answered an operator.
“I’m sorreee, I have the wrong number,” said Richard, thinking he had dialed the wrong number. He dialed again.
“Bonjour . . .” answered the operator again.
“Hello,” said Richard, hesitantly. “Someone left this number to call. My name is Richard Temtchine.”
“Oui, monsieur,” said the operator, “these ees the French Embassy. Your leetle puppy has come to visit us. He ees in our garden, right now. And we noticed a tag weese your number.”
A burst of joy!
Somehow little Sammy traveled thirty New York City blocks and came to rest at a place he’d never visited before—the French Embassy. Sammy was thereby dubbed: “The First True Bilingual Dog” of New York.
THE HUG
As a child, you found refuge from things that were frightening, uncertain, or sad, by crawling into your mom or dad’s lap and receiving a warm, strong hug. You were wrapped with a love that dissolved everything scary—you were safe and at peace.
Now as a grown-up, hugs come in a different form. There may be someone in your life who hugs you in a special way—you feel a surge of amalgamated energy that could be attributed only to the presence of God. And then there are the small miracles—the baffling, unbelievable experiences called god-winks—sending you hugs directly from Him.