Toni Nieuwhof’s Christian Book on Suffering Began With One Verse
The Story
Toni Nieuwhof was a pharmacy resident in Toronto, walking the same thirty minutes to the hospital every day, when she felt an unexpected prompt to pray. It wasn’t something she’d grown up doing. Her family was Lutheran, the kind that showed up every Sunday without fail, but there was no language in her house for a personal relationship with God.
That prompting to pray led Toni to a youth group in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she ended up having coffee with a stranger who could speak English. He explained the gospel to her in a way she hadn’t heard before. Then he asked if she wanted to accept Jesus. She said yes — and to this day, she doesn’t know his name.
“I describe my conversion process really as just the Holy Spirit pursued me,” Toni says. She still doesn’t know the name of the man who shared the gospel with her that day. “Thank you for the part that you played in my faith journey,” she says now, in case he’s ever listening.
Toni is a family law mediator, a former divorce attorney, and the author of Before You Split. This October, she’s releasing her second book, and it’s the most personal one yet: a Christian book on suffering called Honest to God, built from the questions of a man who once demanded to see God’s face.
The Curiosity
The idea for a book about suffering started with Exodus 33. After the golden calf, Moses is emotionally raw, pleading with God for three things: to stay in His presence, to know His ways, and to see His glory. Toni built the entire structure of Honest to God around those three requests, then asked twenty-five others to answer one question: which of Moses’s three asks did you discover most in your own season of suffering?
“Most likely you’ve gone through a period of suffering,” Toni says, describing the pitch she sent to potential contributors. She wanted a book that didn’t rush past the hard part. “I wanted to invite people to share what they had learned about God during that period of suffering, to draw attention to the ways God shows up and gives us gifts of faith in those times.”
The Effort
She knew the ask was unusual. Twenty-five voices, one verse, and a promise to donate one hundred percent of the proceeds to Compassion International and Convoy of Hope, funding young adult education in under-resourced communities. Toni wasn’t sure anyone would say yes to her ask. Still, she picked up the phone anyway.
“I just approached this whole idea with open hands,” Toni says. Even her husband told her as much: “Yeah, this is a bit crazy, but you won’t know if you don’t ask.” The first few wholehearted yes’s gave her the confidence to keep asking. Twenty-five authors and a finished manuscript later, the crazy idea had become a book.
The Solution
Coordinating twenty-five authors, each writing from a different chapter of grief, disappointment, or unanswered prayer, needed a hybrid publishing company that could handle the logistics without losing the heart of the project. Streamline Books, ShareYourStory’s publishing arm, took that on for Honest to God — sorting contributors by which of Moses’s three requests shaped their story, managing edits across two dozen voices, and keeping the book’s tight timeline to an October launch.
The fit made sense from the start, mostly because Toni already knew how to share the work. She and her husband, Carey, have spent years trading manuscripts, editing each other’s writing, and trusting each other’s instincts on the page. A book built around twenty-five voices instead of one needed a publisher just as comfortable with that kind of collaboration — which made the match feel less like a leap and more like the natural next step.
The Journey
The timing for Honest to God was a bit harder than her first. Her husband’s seventh book was launching the same season as hers, and the two of them, usually each other’s first readers, were writing in parallel instead of back to back. Still, they’ve made a point to read each other’s work at every stage. “We do read each other’s material regularly and provide feedback,” Toni says. “I trust Carey’s voice and instinct as an author, and he trusts mine as well.” It is a true partnership in both writing and marriage.
Beyond her own chapters, Toni was also managing twenty-five separate perspectives that needed to feel like one cohesive whole. Advance reader copies have already gone out to the full author group, and the response has given Toni a preview of what the finished book might do for readers well beyond it. She and Carey are planning a joint launch party on October 3, timed deliberately in the gap between his release and her official October 20 launch. Eventually, she hopes to bring the entire group of contributors together in one room, once fundraising allows for it.
The ROI
Honest to God doesn’t officially launch until October 20th, but Toni is already sensing what it might do — she and Carey led churches for twenty years, and these days, when that history comes up in conversation, people respond differently than they did a decade ago. “I do find that people receive us differently than they did five, ten years ago,” she says, “that they’re more open, and maybe a little less dismissive.”
The book itself is built to multiply that effect. Twenty-five contributing authors means twenty-five networks, twenty-five audiences, and twenty-five people with a personal stake in getting Honest to God into readers’ hands before it even ships. Every copy sold during the pre-order window through HonestToGodBook.com also means a larger gift to Compassion International and Convoy of Hope. For Toni, the early win isn’t a speaking invitation or an inbox full of praise. It’s simpler than that: a crazy idea became a real book, and it’s already funding something bigger.
What’s Next for Toni Nieuwhof?
After two decades pastoring three small churches north of Toronto, she’s settled into a fuller mix of work: family law mediation, speaking, writing, and mentoring couples through her own practice. She’s still asked, often, what those twenty years of ministry taught her, and she still answers with the same steadiness that runs through Honest to God. With more than thirty years of marriage between Carey and her, she says, “I would describe us as each other’s biggest cheerleader.”
Her daily rhythm hasn’t changed much even as the book has taken over her calendar. Mornings start with scripture and ten minutes of quiet, breath-centered prayer. In the afternoon, when her anxiety tends to build, she takes another five to ten minutes to reset. In between, she looks for small evidence of God’s presence on her walks and takes the time to say thank you out loud when she sees it.
Honest to God launches October 20, with the hardcover available first through HonestToGodBook.com and a softcover to follow. What Toni wants readers to walk away with is the same thing she’s spent years learning to believe herself: “you just can’t give up on the goodness of God, no matter what suffering you’re going through.” That’s why she wrote a Christian book on suffering, built from twenty-five different stories of struggle in the first place.
Listen to Toni’s full episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
