by Maggie Wallem Rowe

“Write from your scars, not your wounds.”

You may have heard this advice at writing conferences, and perhaps even offered it yourself. I have. Sometimes we are simply too close to loss or a traumatic situation in our past to have the perspective needed to share what we’ve learned with others.

At the same time, aren’t you thankful that the diverse writers of Psalms didn’t hold back? In the lament psalms, David and other psalmists poured out their pain like water from a pitcher.

I live in the mountains of western North Carolina —bluegrass music country. When I was teaching a unit on Psalms to my adult Sunday School class recently, a metaphor occurred to me:

the psalms are the bluegrass of the Bible.

The imagery came as we noodled over the fact that lament psalms make up over one-third, some say nearly half, of the psalter. Bonhoeffer called Psalms “the prayer book of the soul.”

Many psalms were put to music in their original form. Never mind a harp and a lyre—to my way of thinking, those mournful lament psalms were written to the tune of a fiddle and banjo.

Just as contemporary musicians sing those high, lonesome bluegrass blues about children who left too soon or lovers who broke their hearts, David does some wailing of his own. He’s got enemies surrounding him and a son who hates him. He’s been falsely accused of some sins while he’s writhing in regret for others.

Like our lives, bluegrass and the Psalms gravitate between two poles: foot-tapping praise and hand-wringing lament.

But here’s the crucial difference: the audience. Musicians play to a crowd.  The psalms shout glory and pain to an audience of One.

Maybe like me, you were raised in a faith tradition that shunned rote prayers.  As a young believer, I believed we got extra points for originality in our petitions, new angles to our prayers.

Sometimes, though, I am plumb fresh out of new words.

Help her, Lord, I say again and again. She is so scared for her boy.

Heal him, Father! I cry. We love this man. His family needs him

Hold them together, dear Jesus. Their marriage has ripped apart.

It’s then that the laments of the Psalmist explode from my throat and my pen.

Now hear my prayer, listen to my cry. For my life is full of troubles. (Ps. 88:2-3)

O LORD, come back to us! How long will you delay? (Ps. 90: 13)

Rescue me, LORD, from liars and all deceitful people. (Ps. 120:2)

My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.  (Ps. 72:26)

God not only gave us his Word but wants us to pray it back to him. If in his most desperate hour Jesus prayed the psalms (“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”), why can’t we do the same?

The power is not in us or in the quantity of the words we spit out in our suffering. The power is in the One who hears us.

Sometimes the only prayer we can pray is the cry of the psalmist  “Yet I still belong to you; you hold my right hand.” (Ps. 73:23 NLT).

It’s music to God’s ears.

Maggie Wallem Rowe is a national speaker, dramatist, and author whose first book, This Life We Share, was a finalist for the 2021 ECPA Christian Book Award in the New Author category. Maggie has also been a TEDx presenter. Her second book, Life is Sweet, Y’all: Wit and Wisdom with A Side of Sass, released from Tyndale House Publishers in 2022. Maggie writes weekly from Peace Ridge, her home in the mountains of North Carolina. MaggieRowe.com.