Author Hewes has created an inspirational guide for those who have suffered calamities, offering the path to relief and rebuilding. Set on a foundation of Christian faith, her methods are based on her own experience surrounding a family loss. A message sprang to her mind, seeming to encompass the sense of sorrow that pervades such a happening: “A mother’s eyes are like pools in a sea of grief when she loses a child.” This became the basis for Hewes’ exhortations and comfort offered to others, resulting in dynamic verbal guidance supported by A. J. McCoy’s shimmering artwork.

A ferocious lion ready to consume with fierce jaws those who are possessed by discouragement is transmuted into a calm beast with a closed mouth and serene gaze. Thus does God transform one’s sufferings into triumphs, like the master potter’s hands fashioning beautiful, practical work from simple clay. Just as Jesus, by God’s plan, overcame worldly cruelty, so might anyone be renewed through God’s care. A job loss, poverty, or other sufferings of life’s “internship” can lead, Hewes declares, to safety, love, and growth through faith.

Hewes, a licensed clinical social worker, is a speaker, writer, musician, and a leader in ministry who has enhanced this small but significant work through passages from the Holy Bible and through her collaboration with McCoy, a widely recognized virtuoso in illustrating and sculpture. Both have devoted energies to overseas projects and here offer their substantial talents with the sincere wish to invest their audience with the will to accept life’s challenges, understanding them as part of a higher plan to make each individual a work of spiritually imbued artistry. It is certain that their shared efforts will encourage readers of all ages and circumstances to review, revise, and enhance their lives with new purpose and expanded religious dedication.

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