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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, Lisa.
Lisa Warren:Hey Lee.
Dr. Lee Warren:It's good to see you today.
Lisa Warren:It's good to see you too.
Dr. Lee Warren:Will you help me with something?
Lisa Warren:Of
Lisa Warren:course.
Dr. Lee Warren:I can't remember what day it is.
Lisa Warren:It's frontal lobe Friday.
Dr. Lee Warren:Good morning, my friend. I hope you're doing well.
Dr. Lee Warren:It is frontal lobe Friday. This is doctor Lee Warren, your host for another episode of self brain surgery. Hey, I'm bringing you back something from a couple months ago just before my book came out in July. I released an episode called, You're Not Always in a Fight. And I think since we've got several thousand new listeners, I think somebody today needs to hear this.
Dr. Lee Warren:We don't exactly talk about the frontal lobe in this episode, but it's important because your limbic system, especially if you've been through major trauma, your limbic system is the thing that is always busy telling you that you're in some kind of threat or danger or that there's a fight brewing or there's something bad getting ready to happen. That's limbic. Okay? You're in this state of fear of fight or flight and the frontal lobe is your ability gives you the ability to calm that stuff down and say, wait, let's think about this for a minute. Am I really in a fight?
Dr. Lee Warren:What do I need to do to generate peace or think clearly through this so I'll make a good decision instead of reacting and running away or causing a problem? How do we get those frontal lobes involved? And this episode is is just to teach us to remember that no matter what we feel, you're not always in a fight. Kirk Thompson says you sense something, that's your limbic system, and then you make sense of what you sense, that's your frontal lobe. Okay, we're gonna learn how to do that today.
Dr. Lee Warren:This is an important episode. I wanna make sure, if you missed it the first time, you get it today on frontal lobe Friday. Just like Lisa said, it's frontal lobe Friday. I want you to understand this incredible gift that you've been given. Of all the creatures that God created, of course, he made us in his image and we're set apart and we have souls and all that stuff, but all the things he did, we're the only created beings that have the gift of selective attention.
Dr. Lee Warren:You can literally decide what you want to think about and you can choose to think about one thing and not another thing, and that is a power that only humans have and it's incredible. So today on Frontal Lope Friday, I want you to remember that you're not always in a fight and you can choose what you're gonna think about it, how you're gonna respond and react. You'll hear me in this episode talk about Erwin McManus as if I haven't already interviewed him because we talk a little bit about his book Mindshift in this episode. And you'll also hear me talk about Harvey and Lewis, our incredible German short haired pointers, the super pups that we lost to a coyote attack a few weeks ago. We're still really sad about that, but the story is important to the episode.
Dr. Lee Warren:Left it in there because it really gonna help you learn to remember that you're not always in a fight, my friend. So So let's get after it. Good morning, my friend. How are you today? I hope that you are excited about a beautiful day.
Dr. Lee Warren:Whatever you're doing today, if you're driving or working out or studying or writing or whatever you're doing, I want you to think about a few things. And the theme of this podcast is gonna be the learning to understand that you're not always in a fight. You're not always at war. You're not always in a battle. Unfortunately, sometimes our lives put us into this mode of acting like we're always stressed out as a common problem in people who experience major trauma and this PTSD notion, which now we think of as a syndrome, a cluster of symptoms rather than a disorder because it's not something wrong with you, it's something that happened to you and that has produced a certain set of behaviors.
Dr. Lee Warren:So trauma can put us in this mode where we've been through so much stress that we think we're still in it and our bodies act like they're still in it. And the problem with that is you can't live in a fight state all the time or you'll deplete all your energy and all your resources, and your life will become this big revolving circle around the massive thing. And we talked about that with my patient, Anthony. He couldn't close his eye and this idea that you can have your massive thing turn into the thing that you can see. And if you don't learn how to close your eye and look away and and rest and think about something else and learn to get your brain under control, that this will become the defining thing of your life.
Dr. Lee Warren:And Brenda, because you're listening to me, I know that means that you've been through something hard or you love someone who's going through something hard and you're trying to process all these things. And I just wanna give you this this little bit of encouragement today. You are made for not just war, but also for rest. You were made to learn that there's not always a fight to be fought. And sometimes, you need to let other people fight those battles for you.
Dr. Lee Warren:Today, we're gonna unwind some of those ideas. We're gonna talk about war. We're gonna talk about fight. We're gonna talk about the reason Jesus came to the earth. We're gonna talk about what I call trauma mode and rest mode and how not to get worn out.
Dr. Lee Warren:And it's gonna be a little short thought. I got 2 scriptures, maybe 3. I might throw a bonus scripture in there for you. I'm just sitting here this morning. It's what is it?
Dr. Lee Warren:5 o'clock and it's just a good morning to sit and have a cup of coffee with my friend and talk a little bit about rest and fight and when it's time to remember that you're not always in a fight and sometimes it's time to rest. We're gonna talk about all those things because friend, if you're tired and you're worn out and you're wondering why life always seems to be so hard and you just aren't making progress towards hope, then you need to change your mind. And we're gonna do a little self brain surgery this morning because you can't change your life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today. And that, my friend, leaves us with only one question.
Dr. Lee Warren: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 where the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense.
Dr. Lee Warren:Are you ready to change your life? Well, this is the place, Self Brain Surgery School. I'm doctor 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.
Dr. Lee Warren:This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time, my friend.
Dr. Lee Warren:Let's get after it. Alright. Let's get after it. So on my desk right now, I've got a book called Mindshift from Erwin Rafael McManus. Erwin McManus has written some really transformative books.
Dr. Lee Warren:The one that I like the most is called The Genius of Jesus. I talked about it last year a lot, but I was blown away by this idea. So God's up to something because all these people I respect and my work has been pushed into this mode right now of thinking about our brains and how our brains create limitations and they also create opportunities and thinking about how our thinking changes the way we live. And lo and behold, Erwin's new book is called Mindshift and it's it doesn't take a genius to think like 1, to learn how to think differently, to change your life. Right?
Dr. Lee Warren:And when I opened up his book right here on the front, if you see on the video maybe you can read this. Let me see. Can you read that? It says if you're not watching the video you wonder what I'm doing. I was holding up the book to the camera.
Dr. Lee Warren:It says, in the front, there's just this little inscription. Okay? And he says, the intention of this book is to destroy your internal limitations, Erwin McManus. Now that's a pretty simple little declaration of what a book's about. I'm gonna learn something from him.
Dr. Lee Warren:The intention of this book is to destroy your internal limitations. Friend, that's what we're gonna do on the podcast today. So today, we're gonna get into that Erwin McManus idea of I have an intention. I have an aim and a purpose today. I wanna change your mind about something that I think will make a big difference in your life.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm gonna start with a personal story. Okay? As you know, if you've been listening to me very long, and I'm gonna drink coffee while we're talking about this because it's gonna get personal and I need to wake up a little bit. As you know, I spent half of 2,005 in the Iraq war in a tent hospital at a place called Balad Air Base. And back then, they called it Mortaritaville because it was getting mortared or rocketed basically every day for the time period that I was there.
Dr. Lee Warren:It was the most attacked US base in the war, including Iraq or Afghanistan. It was frequently bombed. There were people killed at the at the p x, the little on base Walmart convenience store by a mortar attack shortly before I got there. Some people had been standing around by the flagpole and a mortar landed and several people died. And so it was real.
Dr. Lee Warren:The threat was real of getting blown up or hurt. And then on top of that, we were taking care of trauma patients from car bombings and combat and roadside bombs every day. And so while I was there, I did 200 operation over 200 operations and 100 survived a 100 mortar attacks and all that stuff. And so what happens to you when you live in an environment like that where the threat of getting hurt or being in danger and the threat of having to jump up and take care of some emergency situation is literally 20 fourseven. There are only 2 of us neurosurgeons working and a whole team of surgeons and specialists and nurses and critical care doctors and infectious disease doctors and social workers and rehab people and therapists and nutritionists.
Dr. Lee Warren:We had the entire staff to be able to run a critical care hospital there with us. Some Australians and and Americans working together. It was amazing. But but when you work in that environment where you're literally in peril or under stress 247, it changes something in your brain. And your brain goes through this shift and you start to believe that every moment is dangerous, or every moment you need to be available to go from 0 to a 100 exactly in that time and be ready to go.
Dr. Lee Warren:And something happened when I got home, Of course, I've if you've read my book, No Place to Hide, that's over my left shoulder here. I told the story of how I my deployment was right before I was supposed to get out of the Air Force. I literally got home from the war, went through out processing, and 6 weeks later, I was in private practice in Alabama. So I went from Texas where I knew everybody to Alabama where I knew nobody. I went through a divorce.
Dr. Lee Warren:And I didn't have a support system. And I was by myself, and I didn't have a support system. And I was by myself, and I was in a new practice, and it was basically the day after I got out of combat, I was doing civilian surgery. It was a few weeks, but it felt like the day after. And something happened.
Dr. Lee Warren:Senior older surgeon observed how I was behaving and pulled me aside one day and said, hey, you gotta slow down a little bit. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you're a great surgeon. That's that's clear. It's plain.
Dr. Lee Warren:It's obvious that you're a really good surgeon, but you're wearing your team out because you're running through your cases so quickly that these people don't know what you've been through, and they don't understand why everything has to be so urgent. And I had to think about that for a while and it took me years really to kinda unpeel some of that. But what was happening, especially after Nate came, so my scrub tech in Iraq a few years later came and joined me in my practice in Alabama. Lisa and I had gotten married by then. We moved from Montgomery.
Dr. Lee Warren:I moved from Montgomery to Auburn, and we started our own practice. And Nate came calling on me one day and said, hey, I would really like to come work for you. I'm out of the air force now. And I told him in Iraq, he was so good. I told him, hey, if you ever need a job, come and see me, and he did.
Dr. Lee Warren:He ended up marrying our daughter and he's now the father of our first two grandchildren. But so Nate and I were in that mode together because we had been in war. And so what we did is we continued to operate at the pace like we were in war without even thinking of it. It took me a while to understand that older surgeons advice, but here's what that means. When we're in Iraq and we had a case that normally would take an hour, we might be in the middle of that case and another car bomb might go off and there might be another 20 patients in the ER and one of those people might only have 20 or 30 minutes to live.
Dr. Lee Warren:And so if I'm in the middle of a case, it's gonna take me an hour or 2 and somebody else only has 20 minutes, that guy's gonna die if I don't get that case done. So you you develop this ability and Pete Leonardson and I, the my partner who was in Iraq when I first got there is now my good friend. I send patients to now in Colorado. He's a complex spine surgeon in Denver. And Pete and I Pete Pete kinda first told me, like, you gotta be able to get this case done in half as much time as somebody else because somebody else might come in and need you, and you don't have time to be slow.
Dr. Lee Warren:Like, you gotta get it out and get done, but you also have to be really good. Like, you you can't be slow and you can't be bad. You gotta be fast and really good in order to to be a good combat surgeon. Pete gave me that understanding, then he went back to the states a couple of weeks after I got there. And when I got home, I I didn't know how to turn that switch back off.
Dr. Lee Warren:And so what would happen was we would do a a case like a microdiscectomy in the lumbar spine for somebody's sciatic pain, and I would treat that case subconsciously without even being aware of it. Like I needed to get it done because somebody might be dying in the next room. And I would whip my team into go go go go go go go. And in between surgeries, it was let's go. Let's move this stretcher.
Dr. Lee Warren:Let's clean this room. Let's get after it. And we would knock out 7 or 8 cases and be done at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. What was happening is all the team members were getting worn out and they were getting stressed out because I was operating under this this paradigm that I was still at war. And it's not bad to go fast, and it's not bad to be really good, and it's not bad to have high standards, and it's not bad to expect things to proceed in an orderly way.
Dr. Lee Warren:But it is bad if you wear your team out because nobody is designed or able to operate like they're under imminent danger or stress all the time. And so I had to learn that you're not always in a fight. And then on the psychology side, I had to learn as PTSD patients often do. I had to learn that I wasn't always about to get that alarm read. I wasn't always about to have to don my body armor and run to the bunker, like, when I was back in the states.
Dr. Lee Warren:It was confusing for a while because I didn't have that ability to sleep and rest. I would expect to get awakened by the jets and I would wake up even though there were no jets. And I would expect to get the phone call about the patient blow who'd been blown up, but there wasn't a phone call. It took me years. And Lisa, in counseling and writing and prayer and and talking to pastor John and others and my father-in-law, Dennis, to start to unpeel that idea that I was constantly in danger.
Dr. Lee Warren:That's a big thing. And you too, friend, if you've been through massive things, if you've been through the traumatic experiences, if you've been through a great loss, one thing that you might not even be aware of is that you're living your life in that place where you expect the other shoe to drop all the time. You're living in that place where you're constantly feel as if you're in peril and you're not. And so how do we then change our minds? How do we destroy that internal limitation that's keeping us stuck on go all the time?
Dr. Lee Warren:Because let me tell you what Jesus said. Jesus said in John 10:10, 2 things that are halves of the same sentence. He said the thief, the enemy came to steal, kill, and destroy. Steal, kill, and destroy. But I have come, he said, that you might have life and have it abundantly.
Dr. Lee Warren:You can't have an abundant life while it's being stolen, killed, and destroyed. You can't you can't have those at the same time. Jesus said, I've come that you can have abundance. Here's a scripture that I never caught. I was reading I'm reading a new book.
Dr. Lee Warren:It actually is not a new book. It came out last year. It was new to me, called Rest and War by a pastor in Washington DC named Ben Stewart. And I haven't completed the book yet. I'm thinking I'm gonna get him on the podcast at some point.
Dr. Lee Warren:This is a really good idea. And it's this concept of we are created for rest and we are created for war, but we are not created to stay in one of those states all the time. Now understand what he means by this. There's a scripture in 1st John 38 that says this, the one who does what is sinful is of the devil because the devil has been sinning from the beginning, but the reason the son of God came was to destroy the devil's work. Hear that clearly, friend.
Dr. Lee Warren:The reason Jesus came was to destroy the devil's work. That's first John 38. So put yourself back in John 10:10. The thief, Jesus said, comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly. What's the devil's work?
Dr. Lee Warren:To steal your peace, to steal your joy, to kill your heart, to kill your efficacy, to kill your peace, to kill your marriage, to kill your family, to destroy your hope, to destroy your life, to destroy your peace, to destroy your abundance. Jesus said, it is said of Jesus in John 1st Sean 38. Jesus came to destroy the devil's work. So here's the thing friend, you are living in a fact. A life that is built on the fact that the battle for you has already been fought and has already been won.
Dr. Lee Warren:But you have forgotten that and you're living in the stress and the threat of this constant fight that you've got to fight even though the battle has already been won. My prayer for you today friend is to learn that you're not always in a fight. To remember that it is okay to rest sometimes and to be aware that the reason it feels like you're always in a fight is because your brain does what it's beautifully designed to do. Synapses, Hebbs Law says, synapses that fire to get neurons that fire together wire together through the creation of new synapses. So this neuroplasticity idea that we've been talking about for a long time now, this is literally self brain surgery.
Dr. Lee Warren:Your brain makes neurons every night while you're sleeping and those neurons want a job to do and they will wire into old patterns of thought and old behaviors and old work unless you direct them with directed neuroplasticity, unless you give them a different job to do. And so if your life friend has been built on this constant struggle of constant fight and constant worry and constant fear and constant anxiety because of your massive thing, because of the experiences that you've been through. If your life feels like that to you, it's because you need to sever those sick synapses, you need to do some self brain surgery that starts with that biopsy of looking at your behavior and say, wait, why am I always tired? Why am I always stressed? Why do I always feel like I need a drink?
Dr. Lee Warren:Why do I always feel like I have to turn to this behavior to make me stop feeling that thing? And why do I always seem to have my days play out like they do? It's because you're firing synapses that you may not even be aware of. And it's time to biopsy them, sever those 6 synapses. I'm making the scissor motion with my hand on the camera if you're not watching, if you're just listening, I'm scissoring away over here if you can't even see it.
Dr. Lee Warren:Sever those 6 synapses and give these new neurons a better job to do. And the better job is this, Jeremiah 6 16, there's a passage what God said. He said, this is what the Lord says, stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.
Dr. Lee Warren:Ask where the good way is friend. It start it's time to start asking yourself, isn't there a better way to live than this? Isn't there a better way? I'm so tired of this steal, kill, and destroy part of my life. I'm so tired of feeling like I'm always in a fight, like I've got to jump up and get ready.
Dr. Lee Warren:I have a person that I love. I love this person so much, but this poor person lives in this constant fog of things that they have been offended by. And they it's almost like sometimes I wonder if they don't have a little book that they carry of a list of everybody's name in their life. I'm gonna drink a cup of coffee here because I got this is a big point I'm about to make. Sometimes I wonder if they don't have a list of everybody in their life and all the different ways that they've been offended by these people and a set of strategies that they need to employ whenever they talk to that person.
Dr. Lee Warren:This poor person is so wrapped up in being offended by stuff that if you were to call them, it's almost certain that the first thing they would say to you on the phone is something on the order of, well, my goodness, I would never have imagined that you would be calling me if I guessed a million names when I heard my phone ring, I wouldn't have guessed that you'd be calling because you never call me. Something like that would be the first words out of their mouth. So friend, when I'm telling you that to tell you this, that's that's a trauma response. That's somebody who's living in a state where they believe that they are constantly being victimized by other people in their behavior. Because you would probably, if you saw the name of someone on the phone that was calling you that you hadn't spoken to in a while, you would probably be filled with gratitude and you would probably answer and say, I'm so glad to hear from you.
Dr. Lee Warren:How are you doing today? I've been thinking about calling you. I'm sorry I didn't call you first. Something like that. You have a choice between war of engaging those synapses that say I need to carry this perpetuate this battle that in my mind we'd need to have because we're in conflict and I've got this list of offenses.
Dr. Lee Warren:Or you can enter into rest and you can say, hey, I'm about to have a conversation with this person I love and I'm gonna take this little bit of time that we have and be grateful for it. And that can set off a whole different set of neurotransmitters and create a whole bunch of new synaptic connections in your brain and in that relationship with that other person that will be nurturing and healing. And you have a choice, you can either if you're playing ping pong with somebody, right, You can either enjoy the game in the back and forth and the and the volley and just enjoy it back and forth or you can have it be combat and your entire goal in that can be to score points and defeat your opponent. It can either be kind of a fun little back and forth volley and enjoying the back and forth. How are you?
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm fine. What's going on? I miss you. I love you. I wish I could see you.
Dr. Lee Warren:All those kinds of things or it can be, boom, I'm gonna slam this on you so that you feel this pain that you've made me feel and we're gonna combat now. And you have a choice. So this rest in war idea is that we're made to yes, sometimes we have to take up the fight and sometimes we do have to go into trauma mode. And sometimes we do have to get up after it and go fast and and whip the team and move quickly and make sure that we get through it before the next bomb goes off. But most of the time, we'll need to rest and we need to say, you know what?
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm not in a battle right now. I'm not in danger right now. I'm not in combat right now. This person is trying to engage with me in friendly activities and I need to allow them I need to develop a synaptic connection here that can be helpful and healing for me. And that's the path, friend.
Dr. Lee Warren:This Jeremiah 6 16 idea, this is what the Lord says, stand at the crossroads and look ask for the ancient past, ask where the good way is and walk in it. Remember, do not forget what Jesus said about those of us who feel tired and burdened in Matthew 1128. Jesus said this, look in my eyes friend if you're looking at the camera. Look in my eyes and hear me say this, come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.
Dr. Lee Warren:For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Friend, you don't have to fight all the time. You don't have to. You can unwind that. Now if you've been through major trauma and you are feeling symptoms of PTS or PTSD and you can't sleep and you're using bad behaviors to treat bad feelings, if you're doing treating bad feelings with bad operations and and constantly paying tomorrow taxes, or if you feel like you can't get it under control and you're feeling desperate, maybe even suicidal, you need professional help.
Dr. Lee Warren:Okay? There are times when we need professional help. There are even times when we need medication. There are times when you need to see a doctor or a therapist. But most of us, it's something we can learn to think differently about, and we can learn to switch from fight to rest and spend more time when we're not actually needing to be in a fight to being in rest.
Dr. Lee Warren:I have a mode in the operating room that I call trauma mode. And after years of learning how to slow down a little bit, and I'm still a fast surgeon, I'm still efficient, we still proceed, we try not to make an operation out of everything, and you'll know what that means if you've read hope is the first dose. But but there's a mode that I call trauma mode. And when I first got to Great Plains, I would tell the team once in a while, look, y'all don't y'all don't have a lot of big neurotrauma here, and y'all don't really know what it means when I say this is an emergency. I'm not one of those surgeons.
Dr. Lee Warren:There are some surgeons that make a big deal out of everything. Oh, this is urgent at stat. I've gotta have this test immediately. We gotta go fast, and it's usually not stat. It's not an emergency.
Dr. Lee Warren:To me, stat is the bomb went off and there's a guy coming off the helicopter with somebody else's leg stuck in his chest. He's got a sucking chest wound, and he's got a penetrating head injury, and there's a d cell battery in his frontal lobe, and his jugular veins torn open, and his mandible shot off, and both of his femurs are fractured, and there's polytrauma, and he's bleeding out, and he's hypothermic. That's stat. That guy needs to go to the OR right now. But I'm sorry if your if your patient has a gallbladder attack and they're sore and they're and they're kinda sick and they need to go in the next 4 or 5 hours, that's not stat.
Dr. Lee Warren:Okay? That's that's we need to get this done quickly. So I have a mode that I can switch into when it's really stat and I tell my teams all the time. I told them when I first got to Great Plains, you will never hear doctor Warren say this is an emergency or that something needs to be done stat unless I mean by that that if you don't do it in the next 5 minutes, this person's going to die. That's what stat means to me.
Dr. Lee Warren:Okay? And so once in a while, I'll tell my team we're gonna do this next case in trauma mode. You're gonna see doctor Warren. You're gonna see Damon turn into somebody different in the next few minutes because we're gonna push the gas pedal and we're gonna get this thing done because you need your team to drill and train. Remember that Chris Voss quote, you don't rise to the occasion when the pressure's on, you fall to your preparation.
Dr. Lee Warren:And so we need to prep and prepare and practice that trauma mode from time to time to make sure we're ready when it's the 14 year old who's got an epidural hematoma and they're gonna die in 30 minutes if we don't save them. And so when we go into trauma mode in my OR, it's a different experience for the team. Very efficient. I'm very collected. I don't yell, but things happen at a much more accelerated pace because it's time to go.
Dr. Lee Warren:And you too friend, have a time when you need to go. We have 2 dogs. You can see them over my left shoulder. In that picture of me that shows up in the back of my book, Harvey and Lewis couldn't be more different. They're brothers from the same litter.
Dr. Lee Warren:Lewis was the biggest one. Harvey was the runt. Lewis is a gentleman and a scholar. He's a man of leisure. He likes to lie around and talk and mouth and complain and gripe and and he just sits around a lot.
Dr. Lee Warren:And Harvey is a man of action. He is a fighter. He will go find raccoon and get into it. And Lewis will help him. If there's a battle to be fought and Harvey's in trouble, Lewis will wait into it.
Dr. Lee Warren:He's gotten himself hurt a few times, but he's much more likely to sit on the riverbank and say, I've got your back brother. And he's he's there but he's not engaged. Harvey will fight to the death and he'll come back in the house and here's the interesting thing about Harvey, he's so brave and he won't back down from a fight, but when he comes back inside, he's super anxious. You can see it in his little behaviors, his little body like Lewis will come up in your lap and be a lap dog, but Lewis or Harvey will come in and he'll be freaked out and stressed out and breathing heavy, and he'll come over and put his body up against my leg and just kinda lean in. And and he's saying, dad, I'm still alert.
Dr. Lee Warren:I know there's a fight out there, but I need you to kinda love on me here. He'll come and kinda nuzzle beside me or he'll put his the cutest thing that he does is he'll put his head up in your armpit and he'll just kinda sit there under the it reminds me of that passage that rest in the shadow of God's wing. Like, he wants to to be protected even though he's out there fighting the fight. He still knows that he needs to come in and be safe. So he's anxious and stressed out and then for hours after an event like that, he can't relax.
Dr. Lee Warren:You'll watch him try to sleep. Lewis will be passed out on the dog bed. Harvey will have his head up and his ears perked up and he's looking around and he's still looking for the fight. He doesn't know how to switch easily back into rest mode. So those 2 dogs show us a good example of the fact that sometimes even long after the fight is over you're still primed up like you're in the middle of a fight.
Dr. Lee Warren:And so that's the problem with our lives. When we've been through major things, massive things, massive troubles. We've been through these hard things. We sometimes forget that we need to learn how to shut off the fight, And we also sometimes forget that ultimately the fight has already been won. And the battle that we fought was years ago and God says now it's time to put your head up under my arm and let me hold on to you and remember that it's time to rest.
Dr. Lee Warren:And friend, if this is resonating with you, I just want you to remember today what first John 38 said. The work that Jesus came here to do was to destroy the work of the devil. And he told us in John 10:10 what that work is. The work of the devil primarily, even if he can't have your soul, is to steal your abundance, to steal and kill and destroy the quality of your life. And the massive thing, friend, will take the quality right out of your life if you don't learn how to look away from it and close your eye and learn to rest again.
Dr. Lee Warren:It's time. It's time to learn. Now remember, Isaiah 43 19, Jesus or God said, see I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
Dr. Lee Warren:I wanna tell you, friend, God can make a way where there is no way. He can do something amazing for you. He can teach you even how to rest again when everything in your heart and mind and your limbic system and your and your sympathetic nervous system says, you need to be fighting still. When the phone call comes and your offense and your synopsis that you built say, I need to fight this person, I need to score this point, God will gently remind you, no, no, it's time to rest. It's time to repair.
Dr. Lee Warren:It's time to restore. It's time to seek the abundance again instead of the pain again. You don't have to wade back into the fight, friend. When that person that's been abusing you, you got away from finally and now you're in a new life and you finally stopped drinking, and you finally got out of that life, and you finally recovered from losing your child enough that you can start to potentially see the light again, then you have to remember that every time something else stressful happens, it doesn't mean that your entire life is going back to that pain. It doesn't mean that you're going back into war.
Dr. Lee Warren:It just means that something triggered a memory or a synapse and your job now is to reassign those neurons to sever the 6 synapses and make new healthier ones and find that way, the ancient way, the good way and walk in it and that's where you'll find rest for your souls. What's the ancient way? Jesus said it plain, take my yoke upon you, Lean learn from me and I will give you rest. And there's a path. There's a way.
Dr. Lee Warren:There's a good way that you can walk in It doesn't involve you having to fight and and do battle and do war all the time. Because sometimes you're home from the war and you're gonna wear your team out, you're gonna wear your family out, you're gonna wear the people who love you out. If you're constantly in battle mode, You don't have to be. It's not good for you. You're made for war, yes, but you're also made for rest.
Dr. Lee Warren:And I can learn a lesson from Harvey and Lewis, you're not always in a fight. Come back in the house, come down off the cross, we could use the wood. Tom Waits said, here's a song Alisa Turner sang called My Prayer For You. And listen to what she said. For anyone who's prayed a 1,000 prayers and still can't find the answer anywhere, fighting off the lie that no one cares for anyone who's out there losing hope, feeling you're forsaken and alone, clinging to the last strands of your rope.
Dr. Lee Warren:May God give you eyes to see. He's still greater. Courage to rise and believe he's able. May god be your peace in the fire you're walking through. This is my prayer for you.
Dr. Lee Warren:Friend, I want you to learn that you're not always in a fight. I want you to let God rewire your brain and give it better synopsis so that you can start resting more. You need to. You need to stop thinking that everything's a big battle because massive things are coming. Even if you've had them before, there will be other massive things and you need to be ready to get up and take up that fight again, to fight your way through that pain and back towards hope.
Dr. Lee Warren:But in between those moments, you gotta get into healing mode, to resting mode, to recovery mode. You can't stay in fight mode all the time. You're gonna wear yourself out, friend. And I know this from personal experience. I know it from a 1000 nights when I couldn't sleep after the war.
Dr. Lee Warren:I know it from from a 1000 nights when I couldn't sleep after Mitch died that I was just ready for another. Every time the phone rang, if Kalyn wasn't home with us, every time the phone rang, I thought it was gonna be the police telling me that something had happened to her. For 2 years after we lost Mitch, I was terrified 247 that one of my other kids or grandkids were gonna die. Every time Lisa was driving somewhere, I was holding my breath until I knew she was safe. I was certain that another trauma was coming.
Dr. Lee Warren:And for 2 years, I lived my life on the knife edge of waiting for the other shoe to drop and it was devastating me, friend. And that's why I wrote this book, Hope is the First Host. I want you to learn how to find the light again. To remember that when the darkest storm and the scariest hail and the big biggest windstorm is coming, the branches are falling, the trees are swirling around. The only reason you can see those clouds is because the sun is still behind them.
Dr. Lee Warren:There is still light out there and you've got to learn once that storm has actually passed to rest because there's going to be another storm and you got to be ready to start today. Hey. Thanks for listening. The doctor 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 things.
Dr. Lee Warren:It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audiobook 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, available for free at tommywalkerministries.org. They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the most high god. And if you're interested in learning more, check out tommywalkerministries dotorg.
Dr. Lee Warren:If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wleewarrend.com/prayer. Wleewarrend.com/prayer. And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, self brain surgery, every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries around the world. I'm doctor Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, Frame, you can't change your life until you change your mind.
Dr. Lee Warren:And the good news is you can start today.