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.

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.

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.