When you’re in the business of writing a monthly column for a magazine, you tend to think ahead. What will I muse about next month? What about the month after that?

Sometimes I draw inspiration from something seasonal, and sometimes from a holiday or special occasion that happens to fall in the month for which I’m writing. Oftentimes, my column goes along with the theme of the issue, which our editors thoughtfully select far in advance.

In my thinking ahead, I’d originally planned to share this story in our May issue as an apropos reflection on Mother’s Day. But, when I really thought about it, although the story does center around Mother’s Day, it might just speak even more to the theme of this month’s issue — faith.

Maybe you believe in “God winks,” and maybe you don’t. Perhaps you’ve never even heard anyone say, “Wow, now that’s a God wink!” As I understand it, a “God wink” is a personal happening or circumstance so fortuitous that it transcends pure coincidence and could be perceived as divine intervention: a sign of hope for, or a reflection of, the faith of the person experiencing such a “God wink.”

It could be a beautiful rainbow breaking through the clouds during a graveside service. It might be a red cardinal that seems to often find its way to a tree branch in perfect view through the window of a home whose occupants gather to celebrate a happy occasion while also remembering a lost loved one. It could be the stranger in front of you in the Starbucks drive-thru paying for your latte when you’re having a miserable day or a particularly beautiful sunrise the morning your new baby makes its arrival.

Cynics or non-believers might say that these things are nothing more than pure coincidence — overexaggerations from someone stretching to turn a random occurrence into something more than just that.

While I’ve been a person of faith my whole life and have known what “God winks” are for most of it, nothing stands out in my memories of my first 19 years that stopped me in my tracks and made me think, “Wow, now that’s a God wink!”

I spent many years after my family lost my mom to breast cancer when I was a sophomore in college desperately looking for “God winks” anywhere and everywhere that I could. What I’ve learned is that sometimes “God winks” happen when you’re not even looking.

The series of events that led up to my “God wink” story began on a family trip to Disney World back in the late ’90s. At the start of our vacation, our parents told us kids that they would treat each of the four of us to one special souvenir. I spent the next few days perusing the gift shops for the perfect memento.

An 8th-grader at the time, I considered myself much too mature to appreciate the stuffed Mickeys and Cinderella tiaras that my younger siblings selected. On the last day of our trip, I found my souvenir in a tiny kiosk in the Asia pavilion at Epcot: a beautiful, hand-painted, small wooden pagoda, complete with a delicate chain attached to the top for hanging, and the tiniest little door with its own knob that could open and close.

When we returned from Florida, I placed my pagoda on the corner of my dresser, where it sat for years, until I returned from a summer cross-country camping trip in high school to find, much to my surprise and delight, that my mom had redecorated my bedroom. As I surveyed my refinished antique furniture, new bedding and the fresh coat of paint on the walls, I noticed that she’d hung my special pagoda from its chain by a hook she’d screwed into my ceiling in a sunny corner. What I did not know back then was that as my mom was lovingly updating my childhood bedroom, she also knew that she was very sick and was beginning to make small preparations just in case.

Several years later, I took my pagoda down from its hook and packed it up along with the rest of my belongings that would move with me to Chapel Hill for college. My pagoda sat on a shelf in two different dorm rooms and decorated my desk in my first college apartment. It was during those college years that we said goodbye to my mom.

My pagoda spent several years atop the dresser in the guest bedroom of the tiny house in Durham my husband and I proudly bought as newlyweds, and it was packed into our boxes when we made the move back home to Fayetteville in 2011. In the hustle and bustle of moving into a short-term rental while we looked for the perfect home to start our family, my pagoda landed on the dusty top shelf in the back corner of a small storage shed in the backyard of our rental home, where it was eventually obscured by half-empty gallons of paint, cans of WD-40 and stacks of flower pots.

We lived in that house on General Lee Avenue until April 2014, when we relocated to our current home. Exactly two weeks from our moving date, on April 20, Easter Sunday, we welcomed our first child, a baby girl. Sadie made me a mother exactly three weeks before Mother’s Day, a day that would, for the first time in a decade, not be overshadowed by sadness.

One afternoon in late May, I got a call from the wonderful owners of our rental house to let us know that they’d found something that we’d left behind in the shed and asked if they could return it in person and meet our new baby. Jim and Debby Krepp came to the door of our new home, my forgotten wooden pagoda in hand. As Debby oohed and aahed over our daughter, Jim handed me my pagoda and quietly said, “You might want to look inside.”

I opened the tiny door of the pagoda for the first time since I picked it up in the gift shop all those years ago. Inside was a piece of paper, folded neatly into a perfect square. As soon as I unfolded the paper, I recognized my Mama’s beautiful handwriting.

I read, “Hi Claire! One day you will take this down and open the little door. You’ll find this note that says, “I love you!” Today you’re in California, and I’m cleaning your room and missing you — thinking you’re real messy and really wonderful, too! Xxo Mama.”

I like to think that things don’t always happen by accident and that sometimes, uncanny coincidences might just be something a little bit more. Maybe my mom hoped that I’d discover her hidden note on a special day. I can’t think of a more perfect day than the start to my very own, very first, Mother’s Day weekend.

If that’s not a “God wink,” I don’t know what is, and I choose to keep faith in believing in them.

Read CityView Magazine’s “The Faith Issue” April 2025 e-edition here.