See the Good/God in Everything

By: Regina Clifford
Publisher: Lightning Strikes Press
Publication Date: April 22, 2024
ISBN: 978-0-9756636-1-5
Reviewed by: Rebecca Jane Johnson
Review Date: June 21, 2024

See The Good/God in Everything offers life advice from a woman who knows. Regina Clifford gained wisdom through life experience and through humble prayer. She is a wife and mother whose faith in God has been tested by challenges with fertility, marriage, family, blended family, faith, career, emigration, and friendship. Her marriage to a divorced, older man launched her into a life she did not expect. Through marriage, she gained five adult step children; turning to her faith in God helped her get through life’s challenges. Growing up Asian in Canada, living in the Middle East, being estranged from her family, then becoming an Australian resident inform her international perspective. Whether her insights come from relationships, fertility, marriage, travel, citizenship, baby care, love or forgiveness, Clifford confronts everything with honesty and a strong desire to release judgment and be open to self-improvement. This book is like having a good friend offer intimate and useful advice.

This book reads like journal entries, written by a God-loving soul on a contemplative journey through life today. Each journal entry begins with a provocative title such as: “Working Moms Are My Heroes” or “Check Your Heart Often” or “Be Prepared to Face Your Insecurities.” In each entry, the author describes some issue she confronts, the challenge she faced, and what she learned from it. Each entry ends with a short prayer of thanks to God and closes with a Bible verse that invites readers into further reflection on the topic.

For example, in “Happiness is an Inside Job,” Clifford considers societal notions of happiness, then describes a time when her husband was miserable, and explains what she did to stay strong and not let his misery get to her. She ends this passage with a verse from Proverbs.

This would be a good book to feature in a Bible study book club. It offers tools to cope with repeated rounds of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), repeated failures, endless hoping and getting hopes dashed but ultimately overcoming in the end. From these journal entries, readers get bits and pieces from the author’s life; however, this is not written as a memoir with any story arc. Sometimes the apparent randomness of the topics makes it hard to read in one sitting; nonetheless, this could be a useful book to open to any random page to read daily for quick bites of wisdom and inspiration. The author is purely delightful when she reveals herself through her quirky imagination: how does she deal with toxic thoughts? She visualizes putting bad thoughts into a giant golden toilet and flushing them down while two angels stand witnessing and protecting.

This book encourages keeping faith, and it offers strength, and even a little amusement, to anyone who may be seeking a friend. Clifford is a fellow mother who looks at life’s drama with honesty, humor, and scripture. Clifford discovers that to get into the Word more, all she had to do was put down her phone and pick up her Bible. Her advice is friendly and relatable. The balance of being both realistic and positive makes this book feel like it would be a perfect gift for a mother-to-be who loves to read, to journal, and to study the Bible.

Quill says: See the Good/God in Everything dazzles with wisdom and tenacity; it is a prayer book that holds motherhood and marriage inside a faithful heart, beating to the sounds of a prayerful mind.

For more information on See the Good/God in Everything, please visit the author’s website at: www.reginaclifford.com/