Irene Prins-Murphy

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 own family childcare centre. Reading stories were 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 as a promise of how God walks and guides us along through all of life journeys and never leaves nor forsakes 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. “After 28 years in childcare, I decided to retrain to become a health care worker and care for the elderly. I never left my love of children, though, and I still find myself substituting now and again just so I can tell stories and inspire children to love all that God has created. I guess that’s me in a nutshell!” Family and children are still number one with Irene as now she reads her stories to her three beautiful grandchildren, whom she absolutely “loves to the moon and back.”