When Trauma Flattens You, How do You Find the Strength to Rise?
- Maggie Wallem Rowe
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
IN TODAY’S LETTER
- April giveaway: If a Church Pew Could Talk – a winsome new novel
- Link to SILT training & where you can hear Jan de Chambrier teach May 4-6
- Maggie’s upcoming retreat in New Hampshire April 25-27
- The final post in our current series on sharing in God’s holiness
AUDIO VERSION
IT HAPPENED OVER 25 YEARS AGO, but I still remember the feel of the rough weave of the rug against my wet face. I lay curled in a fetal position on the unforgiving wood floor of our tiny home office on Cape Cod, arms hugging knees tightly to chest.
Depression can do that to you—push your spirits down so low that your body has no choice but to follow. Maybe you’ve been there, too.
We were raising five teenagers in that season of our lives—three we had made from scratch and two who came to us half-baked as pre-teens. That was no cause for concern, though. Home life was chaotic but energizing. My husband grew up in a boisterous, loving family of nine and had over a decade’s experience as a youth pastor. We tag-teamed to make sure one of us was always home to wrangle the pack when the other was occupied with ministry.
Trauma rarely gives advance notice. It arrives like an unwanted guest, sweeping into one’s life without invitation or warning. The nature of the attack against me and our family was one I neither write nor speak publicly about. There was nothing we did to cause it and, as we discovered over months that stretched into years, nothing we could do to resolve it.
And on that bleak fall evening with supper over and the kids in bed, I simply couldn’t cope any longer. My mind refused to focus on the work waiting on my desk. My head dropped into my hands, my body slipping to the floor. You can’t get much lower than that.
It was then that I heard them.
Our home was a modest raised ranch, with the office located four steps above the living room. I had been dimly aware of voices and movement below as members of our church’s gifted a cappella group filed in, bantering with one another and my pastor-husband.
Then the hum of conversation ceased as six voices began to warm and fill the space. Melody and harmony intertwined seamlessly until I could no longer recognize individual singers. There was only one voice in the room.
As the praise rose beyond the rafters of our home, so did my spirits. To this day I can’t recall what they sang, only the reality that worship set me on my feet again. The group had no idea that in their audience of one, someone was healed that night.
“He’s your praise! He’s your God! He did all these tremendous, these staggering things that you saw with your own eyes.” Deuteronomy 10:21 MSG
The power of praise as a weapon against worry, stress and depression is well documented in Scripture.
In 2 Chronicles 20:21, King Jehoshaphat appointed singers to lead the army, praising God and singing, "Give thanks to the LORD; his faithful love endures forever!”
In Acts 16: 16-40, Paul and Silas sang in prison, their unfiltered praise emerging from the deepest darkness.
Psalm 22:3 tells us that God actually inhabits the praise of his people. Paying homage to our Creator welcomes him into the home of our hearts. The light of his presence is a powerful weapon against the darkness of our emotions.
A longtime close friend whose husband has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s told me recently that she and her beloved have sung hymns together each night since his diagnosis. Without a trace of self-pity for the medical challenges they are facing, G. told me, “It’s a small thing that keeps us centered.”
Just over a month ago, we lost our friend Larry to a massive cardiac event that stilled his heart late on a Saturday night before paramedics could rush him to the hospital. Yet the next morning, his grieving widow and mother-in-law chose to watch our church service online. “We couldn’t speak our sorrow yet,” Linda told us, “but we needed to sit in the presence of the praise of God’s people.”
Praise is not a band-aid or a formula. It’s not a magic incantation meant to scare away the boogeyman of doubt and discouragement.
That trauma that occurred so many years ago in New England? Praise didn't end it. It would take another nine years of learning to walk in faith and not fear, even when security officers had to occasionally accompany me when I spoke at major events advertised to the public.
But praise is a strong light against the darkness, a powerful weapon in spiritual warfare, a scriptural command issued for the glory of God and the good of his people.
It’s a way of beholding God’s glory by partaking in the process. It also illuminates our own pathway. As Paul David Tripp writes, “Only when I focus on the holiness and glory of God am I able to see myself with accuracy.”
This is my final letter in our current series. The past six weeks have gone by so quickly!
What shall we cover in the weeks to come? I hope you’ll make suggestions! I read every comment and respond to every email.
But in our movement toward celebrating the Resurrection this Holy Week, I leave you with an invitation from author-composer Andrew Peterson’s Adorning the Dark:
“I want you to remember that one holy way of mending the world is to sing, to write, to paint, to weave new worlds. . . and until the Kingdom comes in its fulness, bend your will to the joyful, tearful telling of its coming.”
The Kingdom is with us already and also not yet.
HE IS RISEN, INDEED!
With so much love,
Maggie
ITS YOUR TURN. How have praise and worship been instrumental in your life? One comment will be chosen at random to win a copy of the charming new novel, If A Church Pew Could Talk, by Cindy Carroway Williams.
BEFORE YOU GO. . .
1. New Englanders! It’s not too late to join me at the annual By Design retreat next week, April 25-27, at Singing Hills in Plainfield, NH. I’ll be speaking on how the holiness of God changes us. I’d love to see you there! You can register here .
2. Many of you responded with great interest to the SILT analogy in last week’s letter. To access Jan de Chambrier’s full teaching, please click here.
3. If you’d like to hear Jan teach in person, she’ll serve once again as keynote at the RESTORE ME conference in Sandy Cove, North East, Maryland, May 4-6, 2025. For more information, check it out here.