Anchored in Promise | Center for Trauma & Resilience Research

Anchored in Promise Book Review

Finding Emotional Stability Through Scripture
Bridge the Gap Series – Volume in Spiritual Integration

Robertson, M. A. (2025). Anchored in promise: Finding emotional stability through Scripture

[PDF eBook]. Center for Trauma & Resilience Research. Microsoft Word - Anchored in Promise (pdf). https://orcid.org/0009-0008-0661-3461

In Anchored in Promise, Dr. Margaret A. Robertson extends the “Bridge the Gap” vision into

explicitly spiritual territory, inviting readers to explore how Scripture can steady the emotional

storms of everyday life. Where Bridging the Gap focuses on integrating emotions and cognitions in clinical and psychoeducational settings, Anchored in Promise turns toward the language of faith, showing how the same trauma-informed, neuroscience-aware lens can illuminate biblical texts and Christian spiritual practice.

Overview and Core Message

At its heart, this book argues that difficult emotions are not spiritual failures but invitations: signals that something important is happening in our bodies, relationships, and walk with God. Drawing on Scripture, pastoral experience, and clinical wisdom, Robertson reframes fear, sadness, anger, shame, and grief as experiences to be brought to God rather than hidden from God. The recurring metaphor of the anchor is well chosen—readers are reminded that stability in the Christian life does not come from suppressing emotion, but from fastening those emotions to a trustworthy Presence.

Each section weaves together three strands:

Biblical reflection – careful engagement with key passages that show real human emotion before God (psalms of lament, prophetic grief, gospel narratives, epistles written from prison, etc.).
Psychoeducation – clear, accessible explanations of what is happening in the nervous system and mind when we are overwhelmed, numb, or reactive.
Practice and reflection – gentle exercises, questions, and prayers that help readers connect the chapter’s ideas to their own story.

The result is a text that feels both theologically grounded and psychologically sound, without collapsing one into the other.

Strengths

1. Trauma-informed, not cliché.
Books on “emotions and faith” can easily slip into sentimental reassurance or quick fixes. Anchored in Promise avoids that trap. Robertson never minimizes the realities of trauma, chronic stress, or moral injury. Instead, she normalizes the body’s survival responses and shows how biblical characters themselves wrestle with terror, despair, and disillusionment. God’s promises are presented not as magic erasers for pain but as stabilizing truths to cling to while the waves are still high.

2. Integrating neuroscience and Scripture.
One of the signature contributions of the Bridge the Gap series is its commitment to emotional-cognitive integration. Here, that integration is extended into Christian discipleship. Readers learn, for example, how practices like breath prayer, lament, gratitude, and embodied worship can help regulate the nervous system, broaden awareness, and create new emotional patterns over time. The “why” behind spiritual disciplines is explained in ways that respect both faith and science.

3. Pastoral tone and accessibility.
Although written by a clinician and researcher, the book is remarkably readable. Robertson’s tone is pastoral rather than academic—firm but compassionate, with frequent invitations to pause, notice, and breathe. The language is accessible for lay readers, yet substantive enough for pastors, chaplains, and counselors looking for resources to recommend or adapt.

4. Practical tools for individuals and groups.
The reflection questions, journaling prompts, and simple practices at the end of sections make the book easy to use in small groups, Bible studies, or one-to-one spiritual direction. Many exercises are trauma-sensitive (offering choices, emphasizing pacing, and validating limits), which will be especially valuable for churches hoping to become more trauma-informed.

Place in the Bridge the Gap Series

As part of the Bridge the Gap series, Anchored in Promise occupies a distinct but complementary niche.

Bridging the Gap focuses primarily on clinical and psychoeducational audiences, mapping how emotions and cognitions can be integrated for lasting therapeutic change.
Anchored in Promise takes those same core ideas—valuing difficult emotions, integrating head and heart, working with the nervous system rather than against it—and translates them into explicitly Christian language and practice.

Readers familiar with the first volume will recognize recurring themes: emotional literacy, the importance of naming and validating feelings, the dangers of spiritual bypass (“skipping” pain with religious language), and the need for embodied, relational pathways to healing. What this volume adds is a rich engagement with Scripture and Christian tradition, showing that emotionally honest faith is not a modern invention but a deeply biblical posture.

Together, the series offers a bridge in two directions:

Between mind and heart – helping readers integrate thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Between clinical insight and spiritual formation – giving both therapists and ministry leaders shared language for collaboration.

Who Will Benefit

Individuals of faith struggling with anxiety, shame, grief, or emotional numbness who have been told—implicitly or explicitly—that “good Christians” don’t feel that way.
Pastors, chaplains, and spiritual directors seeking a trauma-informed, psychologically wise resource to undergird preaching, teaching, or pastoral care.
Christian therapists and counselors wanting a client-friendly text that honors both evidence-based practice and robust Christian spirituality.

Conclusion

Anchored in Promise is a thoughtful, tender guide for anyone who longs to follow Christ with their whole self—mind, body, and emotions included. It does not promise an easy detour around suffering; instead, it offers an anchor strong enough to hold in the middle of it. As a companion volume in the Bridge the Gap series, it deepens the project’s central claim: that when we learn to value, understand, and bring our emotions into honest relationship with God, lasting therapeutic and spiritual change becomes possible.