After a year of loss and bad choices distance Emma Reynolds from her lifelong beliefs, she finds herself pregnant and alone at a twenty-week ultrasound, hearing the words “incompatible with life.” When her son, Theo, survives birth, she fights to give him the best care possible. As each day passes, Emma’s love for Theo grows—along with her fear of losing him. She can’t understand why God allows her son to suffer.

Seventeen-year-old blogger, Mason Hughes, feels lonely and worthless after his father left their family years ago. When he ignores his mother’s push to “contribute to society,” she volunteers him to help Emma each week. Wishing he’d applied for any other job, Mason has no choice but to grocery shop and practice his rusty social skills with a mother and son he doesn’t know.

Paramedic Ben Sullivan has earned himself the title of “most eligible” bachelor among his friends as they continually set him up on blind dates. While he’d love to avoid the uncomfortable events, his heart can’t help but seek the one thing missing in his life—a marriage like his parents have. If only he could find the woman himself.

As Theo’s tiny life connects them to each other, their loneliness breaks under the love of community, and they will never be the same.

Sometimes, hard things happen. Sometimes, they happen to children. According to the National Survey of Children’s Health, over 34 million children have experienced one or more types of adverse childhood experiences or potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood.

When God Makes Scribbles Beautiful helps kids trust that God can take even the hardest things and make them beautiful. This picture book imagines that the hard things in a child’s life is a scribble following him everywhere. The child can’t get rid of the scribble, no matter how hard he tries. Over time, he realizes that God is with him even though the scribble is there too. Eventually, God turns the boy’s scribble into something beautiful: like a cloud in the sky or a steppingstone that leads him somewhere amazing.

Ultimately, When God Makes Scribbles Beautiful gives young readers spiritual encouragement to plant seeds of hope in the face of difficult childhood experiences.

God is full of love for your children, and This Special Blessing for You empowers them to live out who God wants them to be in the world. Encourage the kids in your life to spread love and kindness with this engaging rhyming picture book.

Today is the day the world gets to see,

the beautiful person God made you to be.

Wherever you go, it’s God’s love you’re expressing,

so God sends you out with this special blessing.

This Special Blessing for You uses words and phrases that help children better understand what God wants to communicate to them. Each promise and declaration is based on the Aaronic Blessing found in Numbers 6:23–27: “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”

Children ages 4–8 will delight in these spiritual takeaways:

• God loves you so much and delights in your presence
• Every child is God’s beautiful creation.
• God fills you with power and strength to be who God calls you to be.
• You carry God’s name wherever you go.
• You show the world what God is like by how you love and serve one another.

 

This Special Blessing for You is for:

• Reading first thing in the morning during family breakfast, or at the end of the day during nightly bedtime routines
• Sunday school and Christian school classes, to prepare children for who God is calling them to be and what God is calling them to do each day as they go out into the world.
• Parents and grandparents who want to share God’s blessing with the children in their lives.
• Baptism, Easter, birthday, and any other gift-giving events