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Neurosurgeon and award-winning author Dr. W. Lee Warren, MD delivers daily prescriptions from neuroscience, faith, and common sense on how to lead a healthier, better, happier life. You can’t change your life until you change your mind, and Dr. Warren will teach you the art of self brain surgery to get it done. His new book, Hope Is the First Dose, is available everywhere books are sold.
Hey my friend, I'm so glad to be with you today. I am excited about this episode.
I can't imagine an episode that I've been more excited about to share with you than this one.
Two years ago, more than two years ago, I read a book called Prayer in the Night.
I heard about that book because my friend John Swanson shared with me that it
had made a difference for him in learning lament and the language of the Psalms
and what to do when life gets hard. And so I heard about this book from a writer
named Tish Harrison -Warren.
Tish is an Anglican priest. She's a weekly columnist for the New York Times,
and she's the writer of three books now that I've read that have really made
an impact in my spiritual life.
Liturgy of the Ordinary is just this idea of taking every moment and making it holy,
presenting it in prayer to God, and learning how to live your life in this prayerful
place where you're taking the ordinary things of life and presenting them to
God and allowing him to be part of the story of what you're going through.
The second book, the first one I read, Prayer in the Night, is about what we
do when life gets hard and how we can lean on prayer to learn what to do with
pain and find hope and meaning again when things get really hard.
Tish wrote that book in the aftermath of having a miscarriage and what it was
like to lose a child, and so we share that little bit of common pain.
I should mention as we get into this, we are not related. We have the same last
name, but we are not relatives.
And she mentions at the end that we should do a Warren podcast with Rick Warren
and Tish Harrison Warren and Dr.
Lee Warren. And we're going to work that out. I'm going to find a way to get that done.
So Rick Warren, let him know he needs to get on board with this idea of having
a conversation about brain science and hope and faith and pastoral care and
all these things with the three of us. That would be hilarious and really powerful.
So Tish and I sent an email two years ago to her people shortly after I read
Prayer in the Night. And I said, hey, this is a conversation we need to have on my show.
Her book and her work was really helpful in crystallizing some of the thinking
and some of the things that I wrote about in Hope is the First Dose and just really impactful,
kind of life changing embracement of how we find hope again through the power of prayer.
I've learned so much from her about the power of liturgy, the importance of
understanding that you're not the first person in Christian history that has
gone through the thing that you're going through.
And so the church can reach her arms around you from thousands of years and
provide you with words for hard times and,
Practices and things that you can hold on to disciplines that you can use They'll
serve as this sort of prehab and rehab and self brain surgery that we're always
talking about here on this show And so I sent that email heard back.
Hey, it's a busy time for her She has another book coming out and for a long
time It was maybe next year maybe six months from now God ordains things to happen at the right time,
And I'd forgotten about the outstanding invitation that I had out there for
Tish, and we've gotten busy and the show has grown.
Now we're at this place where the hundred and twenty thousand or so Downloads
a month and people in 160 countries are listening and you're connected and in
that the work that we're doing is Resonating with the right group of people and today's the day.
We got an email a few weeks ago saying hey October
the 20th is the day to share us and Warren is going to be available to be on
your show And so we did it we had an amazing conversation that you're about
to hear and I hope it'll be the first of several I'd love to have her back on
the show again to talk about some other things that we didn't have time to talk
about I Promised her 45 minutes.
We ended up talking for a little over an hour and it was just a tremendous conversation
I think it's gonna bless you if you're hurting if you've gone through some massive
thing and there's some pain in your story This is gonna help you.
Okay friend her book prayer in the night Without question right up there with
dark clouds deep mercy by my friend Mark Brogap as the two things that taught
me the most about praying, lament,
and holding on to that ability to tell God what you're really feeling and not
feeling like that's going to be too much for Him to handle.
And it's super important and it's so helpful. Her book, Prayer in the Night,
changed my life, and I think it'll change yours too.
Now we're also going to talk about her new book about Advent.
We're getting close to the end of the year.
We're getting ready to go through the Christian practice of Advent,
and it'll be incredibly helpful to you. this little book, it's short.
But written in the beautiful style that only she has.
There's this writing that she does that's so just cuts right to the heart of the matter.
I've said before, Tish Harrison Warren to me is like Anne Lamott with better theology.
I love Anne Lamott's books, and her book, Almost Everything,
is a book that I literally read almost every year.
I love Anne Lamott, and I love her writing, and she's made a difference in my life.
But when you read Tish Harrison Warren, you'll see the same kind of insightful
writing, but with really good theology.
She knows who Jesus is and she knows
who God is and she'll help you see him In the right light and how you can hold
on to them when you're hurting and when life is really hard So we're gonna have
a great conversation with Tish Harrison Warren I'm excited to share it with
you and really friend that just leaves us the one question Hey,
are you ready to change your life?
If the answer is yes, there's only one rule You have to change your mind first
and my friend There's a place for the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes
together with faith and everything starts to make sense Are you ready to change your life?
This is the place self brain surgery school.
I'm dr. Lee Warren And this is where we go deep into how we're wired take control
of our thinking and find real hope this Is where we learn to become healthier
feel better and be happier This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.
This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast.
This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.
Music.
Friend, we're back, and I'm so excited. This is actually the longest -awaited
podcast interview I've ever had on my show.
Two years ago, I sent an email, and we finally got it done today.
I've got the incredible writer and Anglican priest, Tish Harrison Warren,
with us today. Tish, welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me and for being patient with my schedule.
Absolutely, you're busy.
And we are so grateful to have a little bit of time with you today.
And we're going to talk about Advent. We're going to talk about lament and what
to do when you're hurting.
And I think before we get into a conversation of that depth,
would it be OK if you prayed for us?
Yeah, I'd love to pray for us. Come, Lord Jesus, we ask that your Holy Spirit
would guide this conversation,
would guide the listeners' thoughts, and would guide all the words of my mouth
and the meditations of our hearts.
And we pray, Lord, that you would show us your light in the darkness and give us hope.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Amen. Thank you.
One thing I want to know before we get started, Tish, is you,
like I think many of us listening today, came from a more evangelical tradition
than you currently are in now. Is that right?
I certainly came from a more low church tradition. It's hard because evangelical
is so broad that I'd still consider myself an evangelical Anglican.
It's just that in Anglicanism that word means something really different than
it does in broader America.
So, yeah, I came from a Baptistic, lower church tradition that I'm in now, for sure.
And also maybe a little more even.
When I'm around what is called an America kind of evangelicalism,
I'm often like, oh yeah, I'm not, I don't fit in here.
So I don't know if I'm an evangelical or not. I really am not.
If we're going, yeah, a historic version of evangelicalism, then I certainly
identify with that. I don't know.
I would have to take, someone would have to give me a quiz or something to find
out if I'm an actual evangelical.
But I don't know I I wish I could I,
Wish I could apply and get a visa or something to identify as like a British
evangelical Which feels like a different animal to me than American evangelicalism,
but I'm not British but I wish that I could just apply to the,
Embassy there or in England or France or something to be considered a European
evangelical, which is a whole other animal,
I guess what I really mean is you came from a background where at some point
you realize the value and the benefit of having a more connectedness to the
church global and church historical.
Yeah, that's true. That's true. I didn't, I really didn't know anything about church history.
So I think there was a, I wouldn't have said this, but I think there was a assumed
assumption of like Jesus was working in the beginning in the early church.
Like 20th century American evangelicalism, right?
That's like when And everything else in between, God's work through the church,
was really opaque to me. And so I do think you're right.
Like, so I didn't have a sense of being connected to a broader Christian tradition growing up.
I think that's important because I want to understand how that transition happened for you.
Because for me, for example, and I grew up in a fairly fundamentalist background
where There was, you pray on your own terms.
There's no connectedness to even other denominations or other groups.
We would have even said that we're not a denomination, that people would say
we're just the church, or we're just Christians.
There was no sense of what do Christians do when they face this,
or what does this season of Advent mean and all that sort of thing.
And we even downplayed the holidays. It was like, Christmas is just another
day and that sort of thing. And so what happened then, isn't that something?
It is sad. It's like always winter and never Christmas. I was like,
I didn't like. That's exactly.
I'm like, I didn't like. I'll tell you why it matters, though.
It matters when, in our family, for example, our son, Mitch,
died in 2013 when he was stabbed.
And I didn't have any words to pray, Tish.
I didn't know what to do. And the idea that I was supposed to be able to summon
a prayer life in that season, it was impossible.
I didn't know what to do. And so what did I do? I doubted, I developed fear.
I didn't think God was hearing me. and then lo and behold, it turns out the
church has answers for that.
And talk about that for a minute if you can.
Yeah, I think that's huge. We can talk about low church, high church,
whatever, evangelicalism versus
a little C, Catholicism, the great tradition, in real abstract terms.
Like, these are just theological kind of concerns that nerdy theologians or
liturgists can argue about.
But for me, that's totally uninteresting. The place that this matters is how
do we actually sustain human beings seeking to know and walk with God in this
really hard world to do that in.
And I think just practically as a priest, so many people end up coming to Anglicanism
or our church or whatever,
washing up on the shores of liturgy because they have suffered because they
have gotten to the point where they're,
because if in more emotive or individualistic, kind of that my individualistic
sort of faith or emotions is what primarily drives my faith.
When in those times of deep doubt or pain or God seeming absence or lack of
inspiration, it just feels like there's no resources Because all you got is
what you bring, exactly like what you said.
And so I think the idea of tradition isn't just that God loves us more or something
if we practice Advent or if we have
a shared chalice versus grape juice in individual cups. It's not that.
I don't really think God cares very much about...
To some extent, I don't think God... You don't get brownie points with Jesus
if you practice Advent versus if you don't. And it's interesting because I did
this book on Advent as part of a series on the church calendar.
At the end of the day, I don't stay up at night trying to get people to practice the church calendar.
I don't care to some extent, even though I wrote a book about it.
All of these things, to me, are tools on how do we...
Sustain a life of faith and discipleship in our world.
I think they're extremely helpful tools. I think they're tools that have lasted
thousands of years, but they're tools. They're not the thing itself.
The thing itself is God and knowing God.
But to neglect these tools ends up with a really empty toolbox and a lack of
resources when things are really hard and really broken.
And one of the great comforts to me about the tradition is that pain, loss, tragedy,
even really specific tragedy, like the loss of a child or the loss of a child
even in violence, we aren't the very first Christians to have faced that.
And even though, of course, that doesn't make it, I'm not saying that makes it any easier.
Everybody bears their own pain to
some extent or we all as I think it
was Luther that said we all lit we all in the
end believe alone and die alone meaning like we there is a reality to our individual
experience and said I think there's great comfort that we are part of a long
train of Saints that we We are a part of a great cloud of witnesses.
And these folks before us didn't, it was no more easy for them to have to face
the kind of real pain and loss and grief and heartache that we face.
They also experienced the same questions of where is God in the midst of their
own pain. they also wrestled with doubt, they also had enormous suffering.
And in the middle of that, they received,
from others even, practices that sustained their faith.
And so I think, I talk about this in prayer in the night, I think of these practices
of faith as something that the church kind of hands down and says,
look, we also know what it's like to not be able to pray.
Kind of like our older brothers and sisters kindly saying, look,
you're going to get to the point where you can't pray.
That's part of life. That's part of the Christian life. and here's what we prayed.
And it's like a life raft or one of those life preservers that you throw to
someone drowning of saying this is what sustained us and we're offering it to
you as something that could sustain you too.
And so the practices of the Christian faith for me are things that we receive from community.
We receive these from our older brothers and sisters all the way of course things
like prayer from the scriptures themselves.
And they sustain us. And so it just feels like there is evangelicalism.
American evangelicalism in particular, and especially 19th, 20th century evangelicalism,
can be so individualistic that it really abandons people to their own ability,
zeal, belief.
And I just think that only takes you so far, and it's really hard to sustain
faith over a lifetime with that.
And I also just think there's an exhaustion that comes. Stanley Harawas said
the problem with evangelicalism is it always has to reinvent the wheel.
And so that need to constantly self -generate all of our kind of Christian spirituality
and practices ends up exhausting people, really.
It just burns people out, and I think some of these practices of the church,
even things that seem...
There's a gentleness that comes, that it's not just on your shoulders to have to do this.
The church calendar is a great example of something that we receive that has
sustained many others through their life of faith,
that we just get to receive as a gift, and we don't have to generate it or make
it on our own. I don't think we could, even if we wanted to.
I think that's important. And you talk in Prayer in the Night about this idea
that how important it is for us to recognize that we're in the middle of a long story.
And we're not the first people that have experienced this chapter of the story
and how the church comes alongside us.
You use the metaphor of the signal flags, the nautical flags, and all of that imagery.
But I think you're exactly right. We come to life with our set of experiences,
and we talk about it on this show all the time, on the neuroscience side,
like our whole life and our thought life is made up of our prior experiences in epigenetics,
which is what other people have said and done in our past, and all our traumas
and all our baggage and all that.
And we come to that and we bring it to Christ, and he says, I can carry that
for you. You talk about yoke and about what he can bear for us.
And I think that it's not just imagery, it's meat on the bones of bare faith
when life gets so hard that you don't know what to do next.
And so I guess I was surprised, just coming out of a more evangelical,
if you will, background, where we never kept any of those holidays or practices,
to learn so much from you about what Advent is.
So let's talk about that for a minute, just as we're entering this season.
What is it? What does it mean? What can people gain from it?
And what can we expect to learn from it as we approach these practices that
Christians have been carrying out for thousands of years?
So, Advent, just very simply, is the season of preparation for the coming of Christ.
It comes four Sundays before Christmas, so it's preparation before the celebration of Christmas.
Advent now is really focused on Christmas. Historically, I think Advent is the
season of focusing on Christ's return,
his final, the eschaton, the end days, the final coming of Christ or the second coming of Christ.
There's three. Yeah, there's three comings. Yeah, I talk in the book about three
comings of Christ celebrated in Advent.
One is the coming of Christ in the Incarnation. That's what we celebrate in Christmas.
One is the coming of Christ in our actual lives, the daily life that we experience.
The places that are broken, or the places we need healing and we need Christ to come.
And the last is the coming of Christ to set all things right in the new heavens
and new earth, which is the ultimate Christian hope, is the return of Jesus.
And Advent is a season of about four weeks, four Sundays before Christmas, where we focus on that.
It's a penitential season, similar to Lent. It has a slightly different tone
than Lent, but it is also a season of kind of repentance, rest, reflection.
And I think it's just a happy coincidence or providence that Advent falls towards
the end of the sort of Gregorian calendar, the secular calendar year.
It usually starts soon after Thanksgiving. Actually, this year,
just fun fact, we have the shortest Advent I think that we can have because
Christmas is on a Monday.
It's a really short Advent, doesn't start till December 3rd this year.
Sometimes if Christmas is on a different day, like a Saturday, it starts earlier.
All that to say, it usually falls right about kind of end of November, beginning of December.
And it's this time before we enter Christmas to think about the places that
we need Jesus to come, the places of brokenness, of war,
of violence, of exploitation,
of sorrow and sadness and brokenness even in our own lives, that we need.
That there is darkness and we need light.
And that is Advent In a nutshell, it's to prepare our hearts to receive Jesus in Christmas,
but also to cry out to God for the ways we need rescue and ransom in our daily
life, and then to wait for the day where Jesus will come, not just as a baby, but as a king,
as the redeemer of all things,
and to come and set all things right.
And I think that's really the punchline, right, is that we remember that life
is hard, that we're in the midst of this season of eternity until he comes back,
history anyway, where everything isn't right, and we know it's not right.
And no matter how hard we try to make it right, it's not, because we need the king to come back.
And I love how you said that the color purple represents royalty,
but it also represents repentance, right, it's the king's coming,
so you better get ready. Right, right.
Yeah, that was, I quote in the book Thomas McKenzie, my late priest who died
really tragically, but he, I asked him as a new Anglican, I was like,
why is purple royalty and repentance?
Because those seem like such different ideas to me.
Repentance just seems so different than the concept of like kingliness.
And that's what he said. He just replied, he just said, the king's coming, get ready.
And so I say that phrase over and over again in the book because it makes me
think of Thomas, but also the color purple now does make me think of that,
of kingship and repentance together, the idea of the king is coming and we are
readying ourselves, not in the sense of we got to work, we have to become moralistic
and try to like scrub ourselves clean for this king,
but the real sober idea of Jesus Jesus actually is going to confront us about the things we hide,
about who we are, about the ways that we...
Do not love him and do not love our neighbor as ourselves.
And there is a sense of throwing ourselves on the mercy of God,
which is ultimately what Advent is a call to do.
It's really counter -cultural there at the end of December.
But I also think there's something really, almost intuitively,
I think we intuitively desire, and I think this is why people struggle so much
with depression around Christmas time.
We intuitively desire before we run into the holidays to have some space to
reflect on, before we say, peace on earth, goodwill to men, to be really honest
about how there is not peace on earth.
That's right. How there is not goodwill toward men.
And so, it's ultimately what repentance begins with, is just honesty.
And so, Advent is a season of being really honest about where we are.
And not only, and the great thing is you don't have to be honest as an individual,
but we can be honest together as a church about that it's not just you that
suffer in a broken world.
It's we suffer in a broken world together.
And yeah, I'm talking, I was, I may be talking too much, but I was talking to
a Christian leader who's a good friend of mine.
And I was talking about, I think there can be talk on the internet of those
good quote -unquote Christians living their holy lives and church is like a
little happy club for them and the rest of us are the marginalized or the broken or the weird,
so the left out ones from church. And it was funny because he said.
And this is a person that knows church really well. He said,
I think I reject the idea that anyone is comfortable in church.
That it is a place where all of us struggle in different ways.
And maybe people are more or less honest about that. But I think,
I don't, I'm a pastor, I'm a church kid, and I still don't feel comfortable in church.
But what I mean by that is we are just people that struggle.
That's right. each and every one of us. And Advent makes space for us to admit
that together, to say, yeah, we're broken.
And we're coming into this season of celebration as people needy to receive.
Wow. Philip Yancey, in What's So Amazing About Grace, he starts with that story,
of this woman who was selling her infant child for prostitution and because
she had to make money to live and use drugs and the things that she was doing.
And he said, have you thought about going to church? And she said,
why would I go there? They'll just make me feel worse about myself.
And the church should be the hospital. The church should be the place where we can go.
And in the New Testament, everybody who was hurting and was broken and was covered
in sin, they went to Jesus.
And now we've created this situation where they're afraid to come to the church.
And that's what you're getting at. Like, we need to be a place where people
are comfortable bringing their brokenness, and they're not going to be ashamed of it.
They're going to be healed from it, or healed with it. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and just that we all are there. Everyone that walks into the church is
coming because we're needy. That's the place where needy people go.
Yeah, you talked about how in your congregation there's somebody who's dealing
with infertility and miscarriage,
there's somebody who's dealing with brokenness and infidelity and disease and
financial issues, and all these people that you've got to pastor at the same time.
And in this podcast, like right now listening all around the world,
there's a guy who had a stroke and can't work and he's worried about his finances,
and there's a woman who wrote in and her son's going to prison for domestic
abuse, and there's somebody else who's dealing like pornography addiction,
and these people I hear from all the time.
So what can we collectively, how can we use this season and this time to bring
our brokenness to Him and know He's going to come?
How is He coming now and how is He coming in the future?
What does it do for us now? Yeah.
I think some of the role of Advent is to just face that neediness really honestly.
And one of the things that struck me in the chapter you're talking about in
Prayer in the Night, as I was writing that, is that my congregation looks really,
I'm in a different church now, but especially the congregation I was in at the
time, looked really normal.
Really even, maybe you could be tempted to think, man, these people really have it together.
They show up, some of them are doctors and lawyers, they have seemingly happy families.
And but if you know them, if you're their pastor, there's so much pain in that
room even of just a seemingly quote -unquote normal congregation, right?
Like it wasn't a Salvation Army 90 % of our congregants are homeless kind of church.
It was a church, it was just a regular church and even that,
like the pain if you just started thinking about it, started thinking about,
I don't just mean abstractly, like the individual stories of people I knew in
that church, the pain was overwhelming.
And these are your average congregations, and the pain is overwhelming.
This is a little bit of a sidetrack, but I absolutely I completely believe in
the concept of privilege I believe in white privilege.
I believe I am privileged but waiting one of the social the Some
elements of the social justice movement that I'm skeptical of is that it can
be it can so divide people Into the haves and the have -nots Which is real to
some extent but that it overlooks the common humanity of just absolute pain
that almost everybody you know is walking in,
including people that seem quote -unquote together, that seem privileged,
or churches that seem together.
As a pastor you get into these people's lives and stories and realize,
oh my gosh, the amount of trauma that your average human being is carrying around is an enormous amount.
And it's just enough to, as a pastor, it just takes, It's enough to silence
you and take your breath away and say, there is really no hope here unless God intervenes.
I can't be enough for these people.
Money, power, can't be enough for these people. Education can't be enough for these people.
Those things are important, but we need redemption. And we need healing that
really can only come from God.
And so making space in the year for just this acknowledgment of real human pain
and the collectiveness of that, that we're all sharing that, I think is huge.
But then also, I think one of the gifts of the church calendar is that it meets
people where they're at.
And it also challenges every person with where they're at.
This would not be a surprise to people who read a lot of my books,
but I definitely tend towards melancholy.
I tend towards feeling the sadness of the world pretty intensely and depression.
I've struggled with depression, for sure, on and off.
Advent is great for people like me.
Advent's also great for people who tend to have a difficult time acknowledging the brokenness.
Especially if you've grown up in a tradition that's Jesus is happy clappy and
if you love Jesus you'll be happy all the time and he makes everything good.
Or these sort of pat answers of there's brokenness, things are hard, whatever.
Thousands of children have died in Palestine and Israel.
But Jesus, but goes real quickly to the theology of God is sovereign, Jesus is good.
Not that those things aren't true, but things can to be true factually.
Without being emotionally helpful. In other words, I think we can use theology
to cork our real questions,
to dampen the actual ways that we wrestle with God, and the actual things that we struggle with.
Again, I deeply think we need theology, but I think we can sometimes,
I think certain Christian communities use theology to allow people to be emotionally,
shallow and emotionally dishonest about what we actually feel, experience.
And so I think Advent is a great call to those who are from a quote -unquote
toxic positivity of Christian life to admit the real brokenness in the world.
At the same time, for people like me, who have big feelings,
who tend towards melancholy, whatever, however you want to say this,
ideogram fours or sixes, I don't even know what I am.
There are times of, there are seasons of celebration, like Christmas,
where then it is demanded of us that we celebrate, whether you feel like it or not, to some extent.
And I don't mean to put that on a burden, a burden on someone in the sense of
if you've just lost a child or a husband, I don't want you to feel burdened by that.
But even if each individual can't show up to celebration, The church as an institution
sustains celebration, calls people to celebration, says, yes.
In Advent, we say, yes, the world is so dark. It is worse than we think.
It's worse than we tend to admit.
But Christmas says, light really
has come into the world and the darkness really could not overcome it.
And so even if it feels like that's not true right now, we have a season where
we say, this is true, this is reality, and our feelings don't determine that.
In fact, we're called to celebrate.
Celebration, I've really come to see for a lot of us, I wanna say particularly
Americans, because we're bad at celebration,
is just as much of a discipline that requires intentionality and requires choices
and intentionality as repentance or reflection or sorrow requires.
I think there is this time that's, nope, it's time to celebrate.
Eat the chocolate, pour the champagne and turn off the doom scrolling and actually
rejoice because you have something to rejoice about and it calls you back to that.
So, I think that there, I obviously think there's a way that we can miss the truth either way here.
I think there are certain Christian communities that run so quickly.
To say Easter that we miss the horror of the crucifixion or that runs so quickly
to Christmas and celebration that we miss the deep pain that Jesus,
that we still are waiting Jesus' return.
And that not all things are new, have been made new.
But I also think we can, if you tend to get stuck there, that's why there's
a whole Christian calendar, right?
Because there's this also, So the sense of, no, you're not allowed to,
you cannot stop and just despair.
That we actually are called to celebrate, to remember that Christ has come and Christ will come again.
And yeah, I think the calendar preaches to us the holism of the gospel.
Holism I'm told by my friends is becoming a bit of a buzzword,
which bugs me because I feel like I was talking about holism before it was cool.
But I think there's a wholism to the gospel that's really hard to get,
just if all we're relying on is our individual community, our individual personality.
I think that we just tend to fall off the horse one side or the other.
And so something about these really ancient traditions calls us back to the
gospel more holistically.
Yeah, and the church calendar is a great example. the Psalms are a super great
example of that, because the Psalmist is just all over the map.
And some of the things, I'm just, in reading the Psalms, you cannot read the
Psalms and go, man, like this guy, if he, if some of the things in the Psalms
were just said from the pulpit,
like the pastor would get removed or called out. They would be,
Don't break their teeth.
Because I mean, I'm reading Psalm 44. Yeah.
And it's just, it's the whole psalm.
It's so depressing. But the whole psalm, do not read this if you're depressed,
because it will just make you more depressed.
But the whole psalm, or if you're feeling alone in your depression,
if you're around all the happy, clappy Christians, read Psalm 44.
Because the whole thing is, you once took care of us, and now you're gone.
And you've left us. And you've forsaken us. And then it ends like,
wake up, come back, oh Lord, you know, calling for God.
But this, it doesn't end with, but I know it's gonna be okay.
But it ends with this like, I feel like you have left us.
You used to care for your people and you sold us, you sold your people for a
pittance, you know, which seems like a really terrible thing to say to God, like a faithless.
There is just no deconstructing evangelical that has been as cynical about God
as David or the psalmist.
It's not always David, but the psalmist was in the Psalms, right?
There's just so much darkness and cynicism there.
But the reason that we have that in our canon is because apparently Christians
thought this was a normal part of the Christian life.
That didn't mean the undoing of the faith, but meant this is actually the passageway
to a much deeper, more honest faith.
And it says all the quiet parts out loud in the Psalms.
But it doesn't just stop in a place of despair, because then you also go other
Psalms that are, your love and kindness lasts forever, forever and ever.
And so there's, what I'm saying is I think that in the actual Christian practices
we get to a lot more honesty and wholism than we're able to get by just genning it up on our own.
That's right. You talk about, there's several places we could go in the midst
of that. And the first one I wanna drill into is this fact that we are.
When we suffer, we individualize it naturally.
It's a neuroscience, how we do that.
And we feel like that what we're going through is so extraordinary.
And I was in the chapel at my hospital shortly after our son died.
And the chaplain pointed out to me something that you wrote about,
and I quoted you in my book, my last book,
he said, hey, it would be reasonable for you to shake your fist and blame God
and deny Him if He really did single you out to suffer.
But the fact is, everybody suffers. Right now in Birmingham,
in Atlanta, in Dallas, in Austin, lots of people have lost a child.
Lots of people are going through this. It's extraordinary, but it's ordinary, too.
And here's what you said, I'm gonna quote you in Prayer in the Night.
I would think of the collective sorrow of the world which we all carry in big
and small ways, the horrors that take away our breath and the common,
ordinary losses of all our lives.
So I think it's important to recognize that yes, our suffering is extraordinary,
but it's also ordinary, and Jesus suffered too.
And I think knowing that he's coming back to make it all right,
that's just a, it's the reason that we can take hope.
And you pointed out the Psalms so many times in the Psalms, 144.
77 that I can think of, and in Lamentations, where the guy changes his mind
about what he's going through in the middle of the problem. It doesn't wait
till the problem is solved.
He says, oh, wait, I'm going to take hope anyway, because God's going to be
faithful. He's going to. I'm going to hold on to that promise.
Yeah, it's someone wrestling in real time with what they believe.
And I love that about the Psalms, is it doesn't edit it.
The psalmist is not 10 years out from the issue, looking back,
talking about how God delivered him. It's right in the middle of it.
All of the doubt and fear and trust
and moments of hope and beauty like it's all right
there and it's dramatic and
it's it's raw and it's yeah it's
really honest yeah so to get a little personal so you and I both share a Christian
faith we also share the fact that we're bereaved parents and you lost a child
and you wrote about that in the beginning of prayer in the night what What drove
you to prayer, specifically the Confirm Prayer?
What drove you to that in the midst of your miscarriage?
Just talk about that for a minute. So powerful.
Yeah, so I do want to say, I had two miscarriages and one was a second trimester
miscarriage, but I also just need to acknowledge that is a different experience
than losing a child who has been born.
It is loss, and I'm not trying to lessen that, but I just I feel like it's different
in than what bereaved and,
other bereaved parents have experienced although I my my friend Cameron Cole
who lost a son at three always Remind his test yours counts to.
You count this counts to but So, how did I come to complain in the middle of that was the question?
Yeah Just what does prayer do and why do you reach for it in those moments?
I was in a similar place that I felt like I couldn't pray.
It was, I could, I didn't, there were too many questions and it felt too big,
and I didn't know the words to say to God.
And I even think, and this is interesting to talk to you as a physician,
I think, I think something biochemically, like it was difficult for me after that to be still.
There was something, I was in like a weird kind of like fight or flight,
there was so much happening in my kind of limbic system that I couldn't experience.
It was really hard for me to still myself and come up with cognitive thoughts
or words or prayers, that sort of thing.
I also just had a lot of doubt.
I was struggling with God and if he loves me and why did he hear these prayers.
We begged for, for the healing of our son and didn't answer them?
Or at least answer them in the way I would have liked. Or the ways,
well it's more than the ways I would have liked. The ways that appeared to be loving to me.
That question that I say in prayer in the night of...
If we can't trust God to keep bad things from happening to us,
how do we trust God at all?
If I couldn't trust a babysitter to try to keep bad things from happening to
my kids, I wouldn't trust the babysitter.
So how do I trust God, who apparently doesn't stop all bad things from happening?
These were, and remain to some extent, very real questions that I bring to God.
And so I just had no tolerance for any kind of prayer practice that didn't seem
to really be honest about those questions and that called people to pat answers
or easy answers without really sitting with the mystery and pain of that.
It felt like I couldn't pray and I was full of doubt and I was full of struggle
and I needed, like I said earlier, Like I needed a life raft,
like I needed, I could have walked away from Jesus,
but there was some part of me by God's grace that didn't even necessarily want
God, but wanted to want God, or that intuited that this problem of pain actually wouldn't be solved by.
Taking God out of the picture.
If there is no God, the problem of theodicy is how can God be all powerful and
all good, and bad things happen in the world, then that's solved.
But you still have the pain.
That's not taken away. Maybe there's not a dilemma around it.
Then there's just no reasonable avenue for it to get better.
Right. There's no hope. There's no redemption of the pain, but the pain's still there.
So I think I just found... I had practiced Kaamplan before.
It had been a practice I'd come back to over the years.
So I knew it.
And I used to go, there was a Catholic church down the street from our house
in Austin that did this really beautiful choral.
It was just men. A men's chorus would sing complin in complete darkness except for some candles.
It was just that all the lights were shut off.
And they would do that on Sunday nights, and I loved it.
And so I think in the midst of the pain of that time of loss and disappointment,
disappointment with God and with the situation with losing our son,
I fell back on this practice because I didn't have words to pray,
but I wanted some interaction with God.
And it did feel like it was, here's a script, here's something you can pray.
And the script, Compline itself, really acknowledges fear, anxiety, and death.
And I needed something that really acknowledged, that was just honest about
the presence of fear, anxiety, and death, and the presence of actual human vulnerability.
And so it felt like it was this way of praying that acknowledged that,
and it was a way that I didn't have to generate on my own. and it gave me words
to pray when I couldn't pray.
The other thing is just very practically, when I was in deepest grief,
nights were particularly hard.
The actual nighttime hours were really hard, and sleep was hard.
It's still today when I'm struggling, it shows up in my sleep, and it shows up at night.
Because I can keep fairly busy during the day, but nights are pretty hard for
me, and still. And it's when all of those, sort of, the yawning chasm of scary
questions open up when it can't be avoided.
And having prayer that's specifically made for night was very helpful for me during that time.
And then entering these prayers, it gave me the space to struggle with these
questions. That's why Prayer in the Night ended up structured around Compline.
And I certainly don't, I do not do Compline every night now.
I do it less than I used to actually, partly because I immersed myself in it
really intensely through the writing of this book.
But I, it's still a practice I return to.
My husband and I return to together sometimes. The actual Compline prayer,
like the specific prayer I took there, the Keep Watch Dear Lord prayer,
allowed me to go explore these questions without feeling like I was getting lost in them.
Like, I think this was when you were asking why Compline. And there was something,
the reason I chose that specific prayer for the book.
Because I the questions I was wrestling with were how do I trust God?
But I that felt like such a big question That
I couldn't really write about that and something about
having these phrases it felt to me the analogy I've used is like a scuba diver
or a cave under the There's scuba divers or this is the same as the deep water
cave divers will tether themselves to something closer to the surface.
And that tether is what allows them to go into these deep, dark places and not get lost.
They can always pull themselves back on the tether.
And it felt like these words given to me by the church were the tether that
allowed me to actually look at these questions honestly and say,
and admit, I really don't trust God and I don't know how to.
And go into that and wrestle with that in specific ways that didn't feel completely
overwhelming because I had this tether of this prayer.
And so the reason I picked Compline for, I picked Compline to pray,
but then also those words of Compline felt like they tethered me in a way that let me,
They let me honestly look at my questions without being afraid that I would
just be washed out to sea.
So I think that was what that prayer and compliment did for me.
That's what I was going to say.
I'm so glad you brought that up. It's perfect. That's exactly right.
There's that Hebrew word that shows up throughout the Old Testament that's often
translated hope is kava, and it's this tension, like holding onto a rope that
God's not going to let go of.
And it shows up over and over, those who wait upon the Lord,
those who kava, those who hold onto the rope, He's going to pull.
That's what you're describing there, that speedy, divert line.
That's totally what I'm... That is what I am describing.
And I think that wasn't just for me like an emotional feeling.
That was like, here's a practice that gives hope.
This is a way to face what, this is a way to get through what the place you're in without escapism.
And that's what I was really looking for. Yeah.
Thank you. All right. Yes. That's going to go so well on that segment.
I promised you about 45 minutes. We're right there.
There's so much more I'd like to talk to you about. So maybe another time we
can do this. But I have a question from John Swanson.
John, everybody listening to this knows John, he's been on the show a bunch of times.
Written some great books, including a little book about Advent that's really helpful.
But John has a question for you. So I'm going to play that for you now.
And let's just talk about John specifically talking about in our role as caregivers
to other people, pastors, chaplains, doctors, what's helpful and what's not
helpful when people are in pain?
And here's John's question. Let me play it for you.
Hi, Lee and Tish. My name is John Swanson.
I'm using Prayer in the Night as a text for a course I'm teaching in pastoral care right now.
That prayer and that book helped sustain me as a hospital chaplain during the pandemic.
As you think about training people for ministry, what are ways that we can help
them see the value of presence as much as preaching,
as we care for people in pain and lament, and quite simply, care for people in life. Thanks.
Yeah. First of all, thank you for the question, and also I think that I've heard
from, I might have gotten a letter from John, but thank you for your work as a hospital chaplain,
and I'm grateful that my work helped in some way, especially through COVID,
which was really hard and dark.
So the question, how can we help people know presence, not just preaching, is important.
Yeah, it feels like there's different sub -communities here.
There's communities that really value presence, and honestly,
I think they undervalue preaching and doctrine, and then we have communities
that so overvalue preaching and the answers and doctrine that we undervalue presence.
And so it's hard to find both, and I think we need both.
Some of this, I really think presence is only learned, like the goodness,
the ministry of presence is only learned when you are in situations that are
so hard and so dark that presence is all you got.
That there aren't answers and I think so some of it honestly is like.
Having people, having Christians, particularly let's say for people going into
ministry, in places, this is why things like CPE are important, right?
But in places where the brokenness is pervasive enough that you know that you can't fix it.
And that the only thing to do is to sit with someone. and cry out to God for help and to be.
So some of it is really getting us as pastors beyond the places that there are
easy answers for and where presence is really what you got.
I also think there can be a certain kind of pressure for Christian leaders to
always know how to do the right thing or say the right thing.
And this is something we have to repent for.
I think that this is something that we, as a community,
need to give permission for, that the pastor's job is not actually.
To show themselves as the smartest person in the room, that the pastor's job
is simply to be a person who deeply needs Jesus. us.
In other words, we as ministers are not the example of getting it all right.
We're not the example of moralism or doctrinal perfection.
We are the example of neediness, of brokenness, of people who repent, right?
And so it is a bit of a culture change in the church of what we expect of pastors,
because I think people do put pressure on themselves to have,
the right answer, and then end up spouting things that are actually pretty hurtful to people.
So some of this just comes with wisdom.
And so what I mean is, I think it's really hard for some of these sort of young,
newly minted seminary grads, if they are young,
to deal with the reality that the brokenness is just more pervasive than you
can fix, even in your own church.
There's ways this manifests itself differently. On the right,
this is like your doctrine's not going to heal people the way that it needs to be healed.
On the left, it's also there's going to be legit things that people could legitimately
criticize your church for on Twitter, ways that you're failing at social justice
or diversity or whatever, that as much as you care about it,
you probably won't solve.
Like there's just going to be brokenness that you can't fix and you can't make
it good enough or moral enough.
And I know there's some despair in that. I think if I heard this as a 23 -year
-old, I'd be like, man, you're just throwing in the towel.
But I actually think those are the places where our strengths and gifts and
abilities and understanding and doctrine wears out, that God actually has a
chance of showing up and doing something surprising.
I think when our resources run out is actually when God moves.
And so it's a shift in posture from trying to fix someone's life to almost being a person,
a friend,
or a really, yeah, someone who practices presence in someone's life,
who simply is,
this is how I feel a lot as a pastor, I'm just very curious and invested in
the storyline of what God is going to do in their life.
It almost feels like I'm watching a movie with God as the protagonist,
and I'm just really interested in the plot. And I'm just curious and looking
out for what God's going to do in this.
But I'm not the driver of the plot, but I'm invested in the plot.
I'm interested. I care about it.
But the only way I think people get there, yes, what I said about getting into
places where there's things you can't fix, but I also think to some of us it's
being in places of your own suffering that teaches you presence with other people.
I'm going to take a teeny tiny example, obviously,
this is much smaller than things like the death of a child or something like that,
but I think one of the chief ways that I've learned to just sit with people
in unsolvable pain is my own dealing with chronic pain and migraines specifically.
Of, I don't think that I was as able to care for people in physical pain until
I experienced chronic insolvable pain.
And then all of those answers of whatever, like.
Have you prayed for healing, like all of that.
But also things like, I mean, if you have chronic pain, people have been like,
hey, have you tried more vitamin C?
And you're like, yes, I've had this for 25 years. You name it, I've tried it.
And you're not the first person to think about that, or whatever,
it's not usually vitamin C, but whatever, St. John's Wort.
And so, you just get, I think it's through your own pain and suffering that
you learn to sit with others in pain and suffering, and some of that can't be taught, right?
I do think we tend, and this is an evangelical thing, we want to really programatize
things and we want to be able to really teach it.
I remember Russell Moore was
interviewing Tim Keller about suffering when Keller was dying of cancer.
And Keller Keller said something like, a lot of these doctrines sit on top of
us, coat the surface, until we're broken open by suffering.
And it's in that breaking open by suffering that the truth of the gospel,
that these doctrines seep in.
And Russell said, how can we do, if you're not dying of cancer,
how do we make that happen?
And Keller paused for a long time, and he said, you can't.
And there is this sense, I think, of man, that's what I mean.
I think these young seminarians, let's talk about the 22 year old guy in seminary, full of answers.
I honestly think he has to be worn down by the suffering of the world before
he can minister well to other people and have presence with other people.
And it's just an awkward growth phase that has to happen. There's a reason.
That Jesus didn't start his public ministry until he was 30.
And I think there is some wisdom in waiting for us to begin,
pastors I'm saying specifically, pastors and priests, to start ordination and public ministry later.
Because I think you have to suffer some.
And I'm not saying that has to be at age 30. Obviously that looks different
in different people's lives.
But I think But I think there is ways that we encounter God that only come through
suffering and that only comes with growth and time and wisdom.
Yeah, with life. So Tish, I've taken up your time.
I'm so grateful for this opportunity to talk to you.
I wish we had time to talk about deconstruction and all these other big topics
and other books. Your first book, Liturgy of the Ordinary, brilliant.
Last thing, somebody out there listening today, unfortunately or fortunately,
I've got this community of people who are hurting and somebody's going through
it today Like they just got the diagnosis just found out their husband has glioblastoma.
They just lost the child What do you do now?
Give us just a couple words of hope for somebody who's just in the midst of
the hard thing Yeah, I think at those very first beginnings I would,
And you really are getting through the next hour at a time.
And so I would hate to be like, read my book or something. Don't do that, probably.
I couldn't do that, I can tell you that. I think the things we need in the deepest
pain are, this is going to sound so basic,
but it's basic, is to take care of your body in the best way you can.
You're not going to be able to totally, but get sleep, get food, and don't be alone.
So let people love you.
And it's going to be hard to even know what you need, but ask people, burden people.
Man, we cannot, as a church, share in one another's burdens unless we're willing
to actually be a burden to someone.
And those...
People that love you want you to burden them. They want you to show up They
want to be able to show up for you.
And I have a friend whose spouse died very young and She sent out she she doesn't
want to be alone right now And it's in the first month still of this happening
and she sent out a Google spreadsheet,
To 15 people or so for us to literally we're signing up for slots in the day
so that 24 hours, people are with her and around her.
And I am so proud of her for asking for that.
So I think, and not everyone would want that, I get that. If that sounds terrible to you, don't do it.
But you, I think we need people, we need community.
We need to take care of ourselves in the most basic ways after shock and that.
And I think we need, if you're a Christian, a person of faith wanting to meet
God in the middle of this, we need gentle spiritual practices.
So whatever, that could look for you like praying complain.
That might be a lot at the very beginning. That might look like just praying
one prayer from complain.
That may look like asking other people to pray for you when you feel like you
don't have the strength to pray. But then I'd also say that one of the most
important Christian practices to receive is grief.
Weep. Feel free to weep.
Feel free to actually face it and fall apart.
I think there is a pressure to keep it together that I don't...is just...it's not Christian.
And Jesus really did weep, and he didn't weep and then apologize for it or excuse it.
I think let yourself fall apart at times. And I can hear and remember, like...
When we lost our son, I was like, yeah, sure, great, let myself fall apart, that'd be great.
I have two other kids I have to hold up. It felt like I don't have the luxury
of that. So I get that too.
So I would literally say, I'm going to take the next two hours and be as sad
and non -functional as I want to be.
We'll set the timer, I will fall apart, and then the timer goes off,
and I will figure out who's going to bring supper to our kids.
There is a sense of, I get it, that life doesn't stop, but you have to carve
out space to let yourself feel the things you feel, because they're not going away.
And the only way through grief is through it.
The only way to face grief is through it.
And it's long, and it's work, and so don't rush yourself to get over it.
Just be in the spot you're at.
But I think basic bodily needs and people caring for you and feeling the things
you feel are pretty important things.
Amen. Thank you so much for your work and your time, your ministry.
I'm so grateful for you, Tish. And I just can't tell you how much my wife,
Lisa, and I have learned from you, how much you've helped us in our own journey after we lost our son.
Just thank you. Thanks for this time. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it That
was awesome. Thank you so much. Okay.
It was great talking to you. I'm a big fan Thank you for your honesty and your
work and also your encouragement to me means a lot.
Yeah, thanks Uh, we're all one big family and we have the same last name.
Oh, yeah Oh, that's funny.
You should probably say that we're not actually related and this is the first
time Okay, that's funny.
Well, I think Rick Warren And the three of you, me, and Rick Warren should just
have a podcast together.
That would be amazing. The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The Warren Show. We could call it, my husband and I had an old blog called The Warren Piece.
And The Warren Piece.
That's perfect. You me and Rick Warren. This is my new life plan.
It's Rick. Get him. We'll do it.
All right. Just put that on your podcast, that we want that to happen,
and then maybe someone will send it to Rick Warren.
We'll speak it into existence. I'm friends with Daniel Amon,
who wrote a book with Rick Warren. So maybe we can close that up and get it done.
I one time got a DM from him that he liked my book. That's the only.
And I think it was the real Rick Warren.
Yeah, sometimes you don't know. Sandra Bullock followed me the other day on Instagram.
Sandra Bullock only has 17 followers. Yeah. She's following.
Congratulations on being one of the 17.
Thank you. Hey, Tish, have a great day. Thank you so much. OK, bye.
What an incredible conversation. I'm so grateful that Tish took the time to be with us today.
And for her assistant, Carly, shout out to you, Carly, for making this happen.
It took two years, and it was worth the wait.
What a great conversation. I pray we can do that again sometime.
We've got lots of other things that Tish and I could talk about.
But friend, I want you to just take it from me, your friend,
your favorite internet brain surgeon.
Prayer in the Night is a book that needs to be on your shelf.
It will give you some tools, some things to reach for. She talked about some
cords to hold on to when life gets hard, and it's going to.
Unfortunately, these massive things happen. Remember, Jesus promised us,
John 16, 33, in this world, you will have trouble.
He also promised us in John 10, 10, that he came here that we could have an abundant life.
And living in the tension between those two truths, those two halves of the quantum reality,
that life is hard and it's also beautiful, requires a strategy so that we don't
focus sin on the hard thing that happens and have that become the only thing
that we can see in our life.
And Prayer in the Night is one of those books that is in my library that I reach
for when I need to remember when I'm hurting and I'm missing Mitch so much when
something else is going on I'm really hurting or I need words to say to a person
I've just given a terminal diagnosis to.
I find myself quoting Tish's words because that's what the church is right it's
a long stream of people all the way back to Jesus all the way back to the garden
all the way back into eternity of God giving us his love and his heart and sharing
it through stories shared by other people.
I'm so grateful that Tish took the time to be with us today.
I hope it was helpful to you.
Send us a comment Lee at drleewarren .com. I'll make sure Tish hears from you if you leave a comment.
You can leave a voicemail speakpipe .com slash drleewarren speakpipe .com slash
drleewarren if you want to leave a voicemail about something from this episode
that you have a question or a comment about, we would love to hear from you.
Don't forget the prayer wall, WLeeWarrenMD .com slash prayer.
There's people all over the world who want to pray with and for you.
And my friend, I just want you to remember, when everything hurts,
there's always a prayer you can say, even in the night.
And you can't change your life until you change your mind. And this is one of
those episodes that's gonna help you get that done.
And the good news is, my friend, you can start today. Hey, thanks for listening.
The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my brand new book, Hope is the First Dose.
It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive
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And I narrated the audio book. if you're not already tired of hearing my voice.
Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,
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