2019
Miracles and Other Reasonable Things:
A Story of Unlearning and Relearning God
by Sarah Bessey
Foreword by Shauna Niequist
A deeply moving and life-affirming account of wrestling with faith and God and finding miracles in the most unexpected places.
In the brief instant Sarah Bessey realized that her minivan was, inevitably, going to hit the car on the highway on the bright, clear day of the crash, she knew intuitively that it would have life-changing consequences. But as she navigated the winding path from her life before the accident—as a popular author, preacher, and loving wife and mother—to her new life after, inhabiting a body that no longer felt like her own, she found that the most unexpected result wasn’t the way this shook her body, but how it shook her deeply rooted faith, upending everything she thought she knew and held so dearly.
Weaving together theology and memoir in her trademark narrative style, Sarah tells us the story of the moment that changed her body and how it ultimately changed her life. The road of healing leads to Rome where she met the Pope (it’s complicated) and encountered the Holy Spirit in the last place she expected. She writes about her miraculous healing, learning to live with chronic pain, and the ways God makes us whole in the midst of suffering. She invites us to a path of knowing God that is filled with ordinary miracles, hope in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and other completely reasonable things.
Insightful, profound, and unexpected, Miracles and Other Reasonable Things is a wild, spirit-filled story of what it means to live with both grief and faith, suffering and joy, as we wrestle with God.
What People Are Saying
“This book—the fullness, depth, and beauty of Sarah Bessey’s faith and artistic genius—is a miracle. Sarah, a prophet who cries out with fury from the pulpit and who whispers tenderly from the page, is simply my favorite faith writer. With Miracles and Other Reasonable Things, she invites us to lives of wonder by opening our eyes to the ordinary, extraordinary miracles of our days.”
— Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed and founder of Together Rising
“Sarah Bessey is a writer of remarkable gifts. Beyond her ability to make a breath-taking sentence, and to tell the truth about the dying and rising of faith, she can tell a story as if she is whispering it straight into your heart. She is, by her own definition, a dangerous woman, with wisdom to spare about learning to love the broken miracles God offers us once we’re honest about where it hurts.”
— Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Learning to Walk in the Dark
“Miracles and Other Reasonable Things will surprise and delight you. Sarah’s writing is so breathtaking, sometimes you think you are reading poetry. The story is so thrilling, sometimes you think you are devouring a novel. And the Spirit she describes is so compelling, you’ll swear you experienced a revival. You won’t put it down once until you close the last page. We are so lucky to be readers in the era of Sarah Bessey.”
— Jen Hatmaker, New York Times bestselling author of Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You and award-winning host of the For the Love Podcast
“Wise and funny, Sarah Bessey writes with hard-won hope that the space between healed and sick can be sacred ground. Thank God for Sarah, a faithful companion to those of us on the losing side of life.”
— Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens For a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved
Available in hardcover, paperback, digital, or audio book!
Darton, Longman + Todd (UK Publisher)
Audio book is also at Audible, Google Play, or Apple Books.