A Quiet Mind to Suffer With: Mental Illness, Trauma, and the Death of Christ

by John Andrew Bryant

2024 Christianity Today Book Award Winner for Christian Living / Spiritual Formation

Publishers Weekly starred review

2023 SWJT Book of the Year Honorable Mention, Counseling


“This is a stunning book, so rare and so beautiful. I cannot recommend it highly enough.” —Matthew A. LaPine

Suffering has been made holy by Christ’s proximity to it.

This is the story of Christ’s nearness to my own suffering—my mental breakdown, my journey to the psych ward, my long, slow, painful recovery—and how Christ will use even our agony and despair to turn us into servants and guests of the mercy offered in his gospel.

We cannot answer suffering. And yet suffering demands an answer. If Jesus is the answer to suffering, what kind of answer is Jesus? Everything that could be taken from a person was taken from him. The worst things a person could be made to see and feel were seen and felt by Christ. All of this came to a point in the nails driven into his hands and became a word that cannot be unspoken—his body broken and his blood poured out for us. Suffering has been made holy by Christ’s proximity to it.