As readers of this blog may already know, I love God Winks. To me, God Winks are audio and visual reminders that he is always with me. I’m happy to say that I can see something in my daily life that brings back a positive connection to someone I love or a meaningful time in my life.

Not all of these “memory moments” are positive, but most are, and they fill my heart with gratitude.

Experts would also refer to these as God Winks as Synchronicities.

Synchronicity is the experience of meaningful coincidences that seem to be related, but have no clear causal connection. The term was introduced by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, who described it as a phenomenon in which events are “acausally connected” through meaning rather than cause and effect.

🔍 Key Features of Synchronicity:

• Two or more events occur close together in time.
• There is no direct cause linking them.
• The events feel deeply meaningful to the person experiencing them.

🧠 Example:

You’re thinking about an old friend you haven’t spoken to in years, and moments later, a song comes on the radio that directly connects you to them in a special way. There’s no logical explanation, but the timing feels too perfect to be a coincidence.

God Winks/synchronicities fill me up, and I promise you, they are there for you to see as well. God and our angels are talking to us; we just need to pay attention :).

Recently, I read Why I Believe by Dr. Henry Cloud.

His book was motivating to me because one of my goals is to help people realize God’s presence in their lives and to show that He is real. I know, big task, right?

Why I Believe was confirmed in many ways, as even psychologists have witnessed the unexplainable. And the book was hopeful that other mental health professionals would continue to speak out about their experiences with both the dark and the light in our field, while having amazing research to back it up.

In Loved Just As I Am, I wrote about being sexually abused at the age of eleven in Indianapolis, Indiana, The Circle City, when my family was on a trip for my brother’s 13-year-old AAU basketball team.

I think it’s cool that one of my Certified Sex Addiction Therapist Supervisors is within IITAP, who is from Indiana. One of my favorite daily devotionals, which I have used for years, is Tony Dungy and Nathan Witaker’s The One Year Uncommon Life Daily Challenge.

Tony Dungy led the Colts to a 29-17 victory over the Chicago Bears in 2007 during Super Bowl XLI. Dungy was the first African American head coach to win a Super Bowl.

Several years ago, my husband and son-in-law realized one day they were reading the same devotional: The One Year Uncommon Life Daily Challenge. I bought the book on my Kindle to see what they were learning. I don’t even understand sports, and I find myself giving sporting examples. I have given the devotional as a gift to several people.

This past week, I saw in the media that the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, Jim Irsay, passed away. In 2021, the Colts launched “Kicking the Stigma Action Fund which provided 31 million in grants to raise awareness for dealing with mental health and addiction issues, research, and organizations.

After researching Irsay, I read he said in a USA Today sports interview in 2014.

“There are millions of death certificates that don’t read alcoholism, but that’s what it is. Instead, they say heart attack, stroke, liver disease, or something else.”

The same day Irsay passed away, and after recently reading Why I Believe, I saw a picture of a horseshoe cloud, which can be challenging to capture. My book cover was initially going to feature a heart from a cloud picture I captured near our Holy Angels in Belmont.

God Winks are all around us. 

 

Melissa McDaniel is a National Clinical Mental Health Counselor, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor, a life coach, and a speaker who has spent nearly two decades helping people transform their lives. She is also the author of Loved Just As I Am.

Loved Just As I Am by Melissa McDaniel, M.Ed., LCMHC, NCC, shares a thirty-year journey of learning and healing from pain and shame, letting go of judgment and control, and never losing sight of the knowledge that God loves unconditionally. McDaniel now uses her complete understanding of compassion and abuse to help others cope and heal.

This book is available on Amazon, Kindle, and my business website.