It is amazing that a poem written over 30 years ago would resurface and birth a whole new direction for Irene Prins-Murphy. “The poem is about two creatures going through life’s journey with their trials and tribulations until they are both so broken, they cry out to their Creator God for freedom. The creatures represent my husband and myself, our love story, and our transformation.”

Irene had worked with children all of her life, raising her own three children while running her family childcare centre. Reading stories was a big part of that, but Irene had never imagined one day her poem would become a book. “The Magnificent Artist was birthed through a poem I had received from my Lord and Saviour one year after being miraculously healed from postpartum depression. It was a message to my husband and me—a promise that God will guide us through all of life’s journeys and never leave nor forsake us.” Irene would go on to eventually open a group preschool and out-of-school care in her small town of Maple Ridge, just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia, but in 2008 things changed.

Family and children are still number one with Irene, and now she reads her stories to her three beautiful grandchildren, whom she absolutely “loves to the moon and back.”