Godwinks: A Sign Of Hope From God
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It's Live in the Bream with the host of Fox News Sunday, Shannon Bream. This week on Live in the Bream, you are going to be encouraged. I think you'll also start to look around to the world around you, maybe in a different way after you hear from these guests we have today.

They have got a brand new book out, God Winks for Moms. These are true stories by Squire Rushnell and Louise Duarte. They are bestselling authors of the God Winks series and so much more. These are such creative, accomplished folks. And what they're doing is putting such beauty into the world by simply pointing out in many cases what's already there. Squire and Louise, thank you for joining us.

Oh, we're thrilled to be on the show with our favorite. You're our favorite. Oh, my goodness. I paid them ahead of time. But you sound very convincing, so I appreciate that. First to start, for people who don't know what a God wink is and about you guys coining this phrase, what is it?

Godwink is one of those little experiences that you might have wanted to call a coincidence. But as we started this journey about 20, 25 years ago, and we started asking people about their coincidence stories, and they would say, well, what do you call a coincidence that isn't a coincidence?

and we kept hearing that and we started saying you know maybe there's a better word and then coincidence looked up coincidence in the dictionary and here's what it said two remarkable events that come together without apparent

And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about two events that come together with a cause and that cause is divine. So that was the word that we started searching. We must have prayed together maybe six months, talked to anybody standing still, anybody over dinner or whatever, about what is a coincidence? What is a coincidence? What do you call it? And one day that little word God wink floated into mind.

And it seemed to be friendly, non-threatening. And the manuscript hadn't gone off to the publisher yet for the first book. We took out all the coincidence words, put in the Godwink word, and it fit. And more important than that, it started to fit into the language as people used it very, very quickly. And we're delighted that, you know, 25 years later, it's now probably at the tipping point. Yeah.

I sure hope so. You guys are the proof that the dedication and the commitment and the passion to do something really special like this. And you guys have both done so many things incredibly on your own and together. And this is really, I think you're right, breaking through where I first heard this used is

is in one of the Hallmark movies that have come from your work, which beautifully display on screen these things that happen that are true stories. These are not, although they would be beautifully scripted things, they are not fictional. I mean, how did you guys start to stumble upon these stories and realize, OK, Godwink is a thing and let's tell people about it?

Well, you know, the first Christmas movie came about because our dear friends who own an inn here on Martha's Vineyard where we live, the beautiful Charlotte Inn, we were having dinner with them one night and they were telling us their incredible story, their love story. And we said, wow, that would make a great movie. That's a great Godwink, How You Met. So we pitched it to Hallmark.

And they loved it. And that was our first film. So, you know, Shannon, you had to be very careful when you go out to dinner with us or speak to us. It could end up in a movie or a book. But that's how it began. And then it grew from there. And the thing that people love so much is exactly what you said. They're beautiful stories, but they're true stories. So at the end of every movie, we show the real people. And that way they connect with them and say, you know something, if that happened for them, maybe.

Maybe it could happen for me, too. And, you know, we have said to our network executives at Netflix and Hallmark all along that we you can't undervalue the authenticity of a true story, because as we go out and do our walking the dog survey, the thing that people say about our Hallmark movies is I love when you get to the end and we see the real people and we do that.

for the purpose of showing that those are the real people. If these God winks really happen to them, they can happen to you too. They can. And you guys have collected these and shared these in so many different ways. This latest book, God Winks for Moms, true stories. I have only read about halfway through, but man, I didn't want to rush these because every single one of these stories, I

First of all, you should also warn that there needs to be a tissue warning on these stories because, oh my goodness, they just to see how the Lord is working, even maybe for decades or years when you have no idea to bring things back around to show you that he clearly has been involved. He cares about you. He loves you. These people's lives, only he could have scripted these beautiful God winks that happen. How do you find these stories?

You know, it's incredible how we find them. We pray about it when we're doing a new book. And it

if they just come to us, it really is miraculous. The dog wink story. Oh yeah. Because we actually in our prayer time, you're talking about prayer. It's so important for us to squire. And I pray together every day. And in our prayer time, you know, a lot of times God just gives us these nudges or ideas or direction. And, and I said to squire one morning after our prayer time, I said, squire, I think we're supposed to do a book about dogs. And squire said, well,

We don't even have a dog. Don't tell Shannon that. She'll think down upon us. Well, I'm going to send you one. I'm going to get you one. So he said, well, what would we do with it? And then he said, well, what if we found some guardrails?

Godwink stories with dogs in the center. At the center. At the center. So we prayed about that. And the very next day, I have a Facebook page called Godwinkers, where we kind of pray for each other. And it's a private group. And all of a sudden popped up. It said, did you see this incredible story about a Rhode Island police officer and a dog that he saved from the shelter? And then what happened after that was miraculous and the most amazing Godwink.

Well, we tracked it down. We pitched it to Netflix. They flipped over it. It was called Rescued by Ruby. And it became the number one family film on Netflix. In the first year, it reached 100 million viewers. It's one of their favorites. And it is all true. And of course, you see the true, the real people at the end. It's an amazing story.

And do you guys feel like there's something happening where I have a lot of folks on the podcast and we talk about entertainment, things that are faith-based, that they've always been around. And I remember when I was a kid, most of it was super cheesy, but we loved supporting it in any case. But gosh, it seems like there are people, even if they're not people of faith, executives and other investors and people who see that there is an audience for this and that

the product that is turning out now is faith-based, but also top production value and acting and sets and all of these things. Do you guys feel that growing interest for that kind of product? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. We've been, we've actually been praying into that for at least the last six years. I think even before, uh,

on the pandemic that we were because Hollywood was just so dark I mean really I mean it still is dark but but at least they're chipping away at it because all of those dark movies had failed I mean you you know you look at Disney's record of dark movies they had one year where they released eight movies and seven of them flopped and I was trying to figure out which one didn't and

They were all dark, dark, dark, dark. And so we have been always saying, go to the light. That's where people really want to be. And particularly when you talk about the flyover states, you know, that's America. That's where the faith-based America is. And that's where people really want good values. And they're not afraid of faith. So the movie industry has...

started looking at this and they're seeing the profitability of, you know, the angel studios and those kinds of movies. And, you know, the Jesus Revolution was the first movie after COVID that actually had a pretty good box office. And so there were things

Things like that are obviously moving the meter, but they are moving so cautiously. I mean, Netflix has got like two slots for a faith-related movie. They call it faith-adjacent these days in the industry. I don't know what that means, but it's...

You know, it's their way of saying, well, we're kind of into the pool, but only our toll. Yeah. But we're praying that that is also going to be a continuing breakthrough. I kind of imagine if they see things like the success of Rescued by Ruby, that they will...

know that there is a platform and whether they, even if it's just a business decision, smart business decision, okay, great. This is something that actually worked. We got great response, all of these streams of this, hopefully that will speak to the fact that there is such a hunger for this. - Yes, there is. - And you all will keep putting out amazing things that can end up on the screen.

But I want to get back to this book again, God Winks for Moms. It's out now. Can we talk through a couple of these stories? Because I just want to give people sort of a taste of what's there. My mom is adopted and there's so much we don't know about the circumstances of her birth and adoption. We've learned some and maybe there'll be a God wake in my mom's life and our lives that we'll find out more too.

But I think that's why this story of this young mom, Darla, really struck me. Such a beautiful thing because I think it's easy to forget if you're not in that situation how just incredibly painful it must be for a young mom to go through with a pregnancy and then to say, I'm going to be selfless enough to give this child to a family that can actually give it everything that I can't. I mean, that's a huge sacrifice. Yeah.

No, it is. Yes, it is. And we've always seen that scene with Darla in the hospital when she's a 17 year old and she's frightened. She's had a breach. She's a cesarean situation and she just feels so alone. And she felt like she kind of got forced into giving up the baby, but she didn't really want to give up.

the baby, but she knew intellectually that it was the right thing to do. And so she's in that situation and she just wants to hold her baby just one time. But the hospital rules are if you're putting the baby into adoption, they don't want the mother and the baby to bond. And so it would be better for the child to have their first child.

hug from the adoptive parents. And I understand that. And I'm sure she did at the time, too. And the nurse, Danella, she knew it, too. But the hospital rules were you can't let the mother bond.

And then that bit of humanity, when Darla was just crying and crying and crying and nurse Danella during the shift change, took the confusion, went and took that little baby, swaddled it up and brought it in. And then watch this teenage mother cover that baby in kisses and say, I will pray for you every day of your life. And then you, you,

you set you see that that was the grounding and that adoption was actually a good thing for the child Chad as he was brought through life and so on and so forth but um adopted kids always have

a curiosity about who was my birth parents there's a secret um resentment that i was given away i was and people use the term put up for adoption and um i remember we were talking to hoda one time at the today show and and she said because she has adopted children she said i don't like that

term put up for adoption and I thought you know you're absolutely right I never said it that way again but anyway the you flash forward 20 years later and and danella has a daughter who has come home with a with a young man and uh and danella gets to know him and and uh and

And she thinks there's a little bit of a chip on his shoulder and asked him where he came from. And he said, well, I was born at Jackson Hospital. My mother gave me up that night. You know, I never saw her again. And so it was a little bit of a resentment there. And, of course, Danella said, remembering back 20 years before, she said, listen, let me tell you something. There are mothers who put their babies into adoption for the good reason.

of the baby for the life of the child and they grieve have by putting that child not having that child to hug and to bring up and so anyway it turns out that chad goes to search for his parents it's a long search and he eventually finds that his parents were

living on an air base in Alaska and the name was Darla and Randy and it turned out that his parents his

His mom was that very teen age girl that Danella had shown her heart to 20 years before. His mother-in-law. And so Danella was the mother-in-law of Chad and his real mom was Darla. And it is one of those that is such a sweet little story. And we're going to do bite-sized God-winked movies where we're convinced that we're going to do it.

going to get that done. And we have that at Hallmark right now. Yeah. Yeah. Let us pray. Yeah. I love that because the fact that his mother-in-law was the one who snuck, broke hospital policy and snuck and brought him to his mom so she could hold him and say goodbye. And then decades later, his, her daughter brings home this young man and says, this is the man I'm going to marry. I mean, that could not be anything but a God wink. That's the

perfect oh i know description yeah yeah well that's with all the god wings because you know they're little we always see god wings as uh gifts left on your doorstep but you need to open the door and open your gift our job is to get people to understand and to see the god wings because god is speaking to us all the time you know some people say oh well i i physically i hear god

i don't hear god like that but god speaks to us in many different ways he speaks to us through his word he speaks to us through people he speaks to us when he divinely aligns heaven and earth to come together out of eight billion people on the planet it's a person-to-person call just for you god saying i see you i'm not gonna abandon you and i love you and i'm here for you and you're so right we all can hear and see him in different ways and so many times my morning reading is focused on

you should pray for God's presence. It's there, but you should pray, Lord, make me aware of your presence because we may miss a God wink around us. If you, as you said, we haven't opened the door. We haven't opened that gift. Our hearts and our minds aren't open to it. And my husband and I had a really long discussion last night about miracles, about what God still does. Were these just things from Bible times? Is he doing miracles now? How do we see them? How do we understand them? And I think it's,

easy in today's day and age. We're busy. We're distracted. We are told that, you know, science and religion don't agree and that, you know, you shouldn't be into something that seems more spiritual. You should accept concrete facts that are in front of you. And so it leaves almost no room for the divine in our lives when we operate in that hustle and bustle and with sort of that closed off heart and mind.

You know, it's interesting with Psalms. I mean, Proverbs 3, 6, it says, all your ways acknowledge me and I will direct your steps. When we acknowledge God, what he does is he will give us God wings along our path to show us that we're in the right direction. And we often see God wings. It's like the big people at the at the table and Thanksgiving. You're the little kid and grandma, someone you love is just amazing.

leans over, gives you a little wink. You don't ask, what does that mean? You knew it means I'm thinking about you and I love you. And that's what God does. He does it all the time. Squire and I have God wings every day. I mean, we're we anticipate them. We do. Absolutely. And we see them all the time. Everything in our life is God divinely connecting us because he's sovereign. There's no

Coincidence is no happenstance. God is in this 24 seven. So why wouldn't he create these little precious moments, gifts for us so that we can acknowledge him? And when we do acknowledge him, he gives us more. There's a wonderful it was an evangelist back in the 1600s at William Temple who said, when I pray, coincidences happen. When I don't, they don't.

Well, he didn't have the word God wing. You can't blame him for using the wrong word. But when he prayed things like this, heaven and earth came together for these little moments, these little gifts from God. And, you know, people always ask us, how do I get more God wings? And and so our job, we feel, is to get people to.

Learn to see them, to develop the eyes to see them when they happen. And because the more we communicate with God, the more that he communicates with us. We have a series of principles about God winks. And one of them is when I pray, I'm talking to God.

When he talks to me, it's a God wink. And so that principle, I think, underscores the fact that we just need to talk to him more and then he'll talk to us more through God winks.

Yeah, the communication is there. We have to invest in that relationship like we would do in any relationship. Exactly. But what a beautiful, fruitful thing it can be if our hearts and our minds are open. And, you know, it doesn't take anything formal. If you're not somebody of faith or somebody who prays, he's listening. I mean, I've had prayers before when it's just, Lord, please help me. That's all I could get out.

I mean, he hears that. Don't think you have to be eloquent or educated or know the scriptures. He's always there. And whatever you can say to him, he is so happy to hear from you. And he will meet you where you're at. We'll have more Live in the Bream in a moment.

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So again, this book is God Winks from Moms. These are true stories. But guys, tell us more about where we can find what you're doing, social media or what you're up to and how to find the book.

well Godwinks.com is kind of the central source of where people can go and find out what's going on and uh and we always talk about our next Hallmark movie or the next Netflix movie or the next book and that kind of thing and we have a reservoir of stories that we are telling all the time on Facebook

on all of our social media and uh and people love to send us their stories we love to get them they can they can uh share your godwink.com you can send us your Godwink story maybe it'll end up on Facebook maybe it'll end up in a book maybe it'll be a bite-sized Godwin movie or a Hallmark movie

So it is evolving and we love what we do. I mean, we do this with a passion.

Well, we can tell it is, it is evident your love, your passion, your joy for sharing these things that gosh, can be such an encouragement to people who are waiting, who are watching, who want to hear, want to see some progress, some hope in their lives. And I just thank you guys for all of the, the beautiful, encouraging things that you put into the world. And we can't wait to see what you have next.

Thank you so much. God bless you. God bless. Thank you. Listen ad-free with the Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.

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