This book gripped my heart, and I could hardly put it down until I finished it. Having had many years of mental issues and depression myself, Sarah put into words what was in my heart. For slowly over the years, I also found healing in the beauty of God- a looking for beauty in what He created, in music, in words, in a painting, and beautiful, healing in truth in learning that He is who He says He is. And also by learning that my brokenness does not make me ugly to Him, but He is truly is with me even there and leads me beside His still waters, restores my soul.
This book answers the United States' question of where is God and beauty in places of intense suffering... He is not limited to only certain people or levels of living. He did not create suffering, sin did, but He doesn't turn His face away but is Emmanuel- God with us. Even in the deepest pain, beauty can begin to break in.

I read through This Beautiful Truth expectantly, waiting to be taught by Sarah, as well as to learn more of her. I was not disappointed. I loved the format of each chapter-- a pulling back of the curtain of Sarah's mind, heart, and life in order to give credibility to her understanding, wisdom, creativity, and depth. What a joy to read!

DNF. Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

As a mental health provider I was curious to read this as I always like to have resources to point clients toward.

I could not get into this book for several reasons. The author’s overuse of the term “mental illness” which is not person-first and is derived from the medical model, and is not strengths-based. There are many alternatives to this term such as mental health experiences, person experiencing OCD.

On page 20, I found her use of the word “cripple” to not be a great choice of words as well.

I once heard the podcaster Anne Bogel say that a memoir written just because something interesting happened to a person isn't enough for her. Authors compose the best memoirs after they have had time to ruminate on their lives and extract meaning from them. As Kierkegaard said, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."

In This Beautiful Truth, Sarah Clarkson shares her hard-won understanding of suffering and intersecting breakthroughs of God's beauty during her years walking with a rare form of OCD that onset when she was 17.

With delicate intimacy, Sarah intersperses an account of her seasons of despair and moments of joy with a defense of God's specific and personal goodness in the face of obvious evil.

I definitely plan to reread this book and share it with a number of friends who struggle with mental illness.

I received an advance copy of this book from Baker Books for review.

“Beauty and brokenness told me two different stories about the world. I believe that Beauty told true.”

There’s a song I keep on the bulletin board over my desk, one I heard years ago while visiting Christ Church Santa Fe that absolutely speaks to my soul: “Why Do We Hunger For Beauty?” The song doesn’t answer directly, but the answer is plainly there: Beauty is God’s doing. It’s reflected in nature, in art, in any good we encounter. Beauty is God, His calling to humanity. This book is that song in written form.

This Beautiful Truth is Sarah Clarkson’s candid journey with mental illness. The book “is a plea to present God as the healer and never the inflictor of our pain.” It’s gorgeously written and heartfelt. “God breaks into our pain in a tangible way,” Sarah says, “teaching us to trust His love and to hope for His healing. Beauty is a voice singing into our suffering, beckoning us toward restoration.”

This book was so lovingly created, and beautifully written. I found myself encouraged in some very desolate places in my heart. Sarah took my hand, and showed me Jesus where I thought He was not. I cannot praise this book enough, and I am forever indebted to Sarah for having so much courage to write the hard things. Christians need this type of honesty and love in their leaders, and authors.

This book is deserving of all the stars. It is a memoir and yet at the same time, much more. Sarah Clarkson brings light to a dark part of her life and shows others how she found and continues to find healing through God's goodness as seen in his beautiful creations. Her courage in telling her story will help many others.

I have always been fascinated by her ability to write so eloquently about the intersection between literature, the arts and theology. This book explores these themes as well.

Thank you to NetGalley, Baker Books and Sarah Clarkson for the complimentary ebook. It was wonderful to get to read this early so that I can tell others about it. Make sure to get a copy of This Beautiful Truth when it is published on June 8.

Sarah Clarkson does a wonderful job of guiding her readers to consider, accept and celebrate that God is with them in their darkness, rather than leaving them to stumble through alone. This paradigm shifting belief is well supported in Scripture, and not often talked about, Sharing with a tender vulnerability, that is rare and precious, Sarah invites you into her own struggle with mental illness and shows the path forward into light.

The book I didn’t know I needed to read...theology and Christian worldview titles are always a part of my book stack, but this is one unlike any that I’ve read before. It perfectly and succinctly outlines that brokenness and hurt exist in the world, while simultaneously offering the hope only found in Christ, and avoiding cliche or dismissive answers. Sarah Clarkson, in pointing to Christ, delivers a message of beauty and truth for any reader who is looking to be encouraged to press on in the faith. She shares poignant illustrations of her personal struggles with a rare form OCD, her wrestling with God for help, and the answers brought through beauty in creation, art, word and song. Highly recommended! I’ll be purchasing this one for a permanent place on our shelf.

We all would agree that we live in the world where honesty, courage and hope are so desperately needed, where pain, loss, suffering and darkness have become frequent lodgers if not within us but next door. With this world in mind Sarah Clarkson bravely invites us to join her honest journey into the depth of her soul, tormented by pain, struggle and moments of darkness, to see how the beauty of God can redeem, restore and give hope. And this is Truth, and this is Beauty that no matter how deep our rabbit hole is, no matter how dark and terrifying it might be, we are not alone - God sends his light one star a moment, one candle a prayer, God sends his Beauty one flower a glance, one song a swirl to break into our darkness and paralyze it with his quintessential goodness ultimately ripping it to pieces in the person of Jesus Christ. Read the book, and join the battle, “the one waged by the human heart to reimagine God as good when pain and fear have hidden his face”, and “taste and see that the Lord is good”.

This Beautiful Truth is one of those stories which brings you face-to-face with the hard question of this life, the question Job faced over three thousand years ago and the question we still face today in the midst of disease, war and rioting, isolation, loneliness and depression. How do we believe God is good in a broken and suffering world?

Sarah Clarkson invites us into her story of living with mental illness and the long journey of coming face-to-face with the beautiful truth of God. From the waking nightmares in her early childhood through the anxious days of adulthood, Sarah traces the presence of God and the power of beauty to break through the darkness. Her vulnerability in sharing this often-taboo topic gives hope and a way forward for those who are struggling. More than that, Sarah wrestles through a biblical theology of who God is in the face of a broken mind with a fierce honesty and relentless commitment to not rest with empty platitudes or superficial hope.

This Beautiful Truth challenges me to bring my own wounds and suffering into the light of God’s goodness and to see the beauty that breaks through my darkness. It is not only the knowledge of a saving God, that Sarah reminds me of, but the intimacy of a knowing God who heals my wounds and cares for the desires of my heart. This is the good, the true and the beautiful God who reaches into my woundedness with the wonder of his love and journeys with me through the dark nights.

I am still reading this book but am mesmerized with the beauty it explores and the fragility Sarah lives with - what an unfolding. Beautiful.

Beautiful is the only appropriate word to describe this work by Sarah Clarkson. Although the foundation of the work is grounded in darkness of mental illness, Sarah leads you into a splendid encounter with wonder. I found myself highlighting in every chapter because her words are meant to be read again and again. Through the entire book I felt like I was leaving the aching world and entering a chapel full of light and peace. I entered and I remain. #thisbeautifultruth

Five things about This Beautiful Truth by Sarah Clarkson. 5/5 ⭐️s

This book will be released June 8th.

1. The first word that came to mind while reading this book was vulnerability. Wow! Sarah is so vulnerable in this memoir of her life with a rare form of OCD ( she writes: “mental illness” is such a tame, clinical term for what is actually an intimate disintegration of inward identity.) and theological exploration of the healing and liberating power of beauty and love.
2. I first encountered Sarah Clarkson through her love letter to books, Book Girl. From that point on I followed her on Instagram where she shared a great deal of her life, studying theology at Oxford, marrying her dreamy Danish husband, having her adorable children, reading gorgeous poems through advent...she was sharing. But in this book she reveals what Instagram followers don’t see. She’s just writing her story. I seriously doubt this was intentional. Yet, It is such a clear example and reminder that looks can be so entirely deceiving. Repeatedly she refers in the book to experiences I remember as posted moments in my feed. They looked enviable. The lived experience was different.
3. But this isn’t only a memoir. This is a theological defense of a new approach to theodicy (“the way we defend God‘s goodness and power in so evil and aching a world”... why do we suffer? Why does God allow it? Where is he when we are hurt?”) She explores the inaccuracies, limitations, and damages inflicted by popular theodicies that suggest these experiences are simply the will of God ( The longer I studied the more I began to resent the way the theology [addresses] pain with a list of arguments and doctrinal rationales - your baby may have died, but everything works together for good. You may have a mental illness, Paul had a thorn in his flesh and God left it there for a greater purpose. You may have been abused but didn’t make you compassionate? ... I sat in the library and wondered if God calls evil, if my pain was somehow necessary to the plot of his story. But then, two great graces came to me.”) And it is the revelation and argument in favor of these two great graces that Clarkson so eloquently and compassionately unfolds for us. Spoiler - beauty and love play a BIG part!
4. “Every kind word spoken, every meal proffered in love, every prayer said can become a feisty, active redemption that communicates reality opposite to...destruction...Here, in ordinary time, in the kitchen and slightly messy bedroom with 1000 things to do, we counteract despair with laughter. In place of destruction, we make order. We form spaces and hours in which people can be loved and conversations had, times in which those who take part know their lives to be precious. We take what is broken and heal it....” “The healing kind of power is not the sort of been taught to respect by existence in a fallen world where power just means brute force....”
5. “Too often, Christianity has taught an incomplete theology of incarnation and place. We have thought that the coming of Jesus meant that no place for sacred and that the fallen world was a disaster from which we would someday be evacuated. This kind of thinking has allowed a disengagement with material reality, with home and place, with earth and body, that has too often meant the very people made by creator God are the ones who least value and nourish his creation and are least at home within his world.”

I have a degree in Biblical Studies. Theology is a huge part of my world view. But I do not often read popular Christian thinkers because I too often find their idolatry of themselves and their own ideas supersedes anything actually Biblical they might allow to creep into their message. I know that sounds harsh but I really believe organized religion is a politically manipulated mess and so I rarely let it interfere with my own faith. Clarkson however comes at theology with a humility, curiosity, and genuineness that is impossible to ignore. I can’t help but think this has a lot to do with her foundation in storytelling. I recommend this book to anyone - of any faith or no faith. Ultimately, it’s a book about the beauty of humanity and the transformative power of love. Of the wholeness of the broken and our responsibility to each other. I loved this book.

With This Beautiful Truth, Sarah Clarkson comes alongside her reader and gently lifts their chin, pulling their gaze from the depths up to the light. In her gentle but fervent way, Clarkson reminds us of the power of beauty, of its Source, and of our need for it. This is the kind of book that you reread every year, struck afresh by the goodness and encouragement crammed into its pages.