Self-Brain Surgery Saturday: Suffering Substitution

Good morning my friend, I hope you're doing well. It's Saturday.

I really am having a hard time believing it's the 21st of January already.

This year, 2023, getting off to a good start. It has been cold and snowy, but beautiful outside the last couple of days and I hope

you are warm and well and safe wherever you are.

It's Self Brain Surgery Saturday. I'm going to get a little personal this morning.

That happened yesterday that I feel like would be of some benefit to you

potentially if I share with you. Lisa and I had a good conversation about it and

it's kind of a brain switch that I went through yesterday. The Lord delivered me

from a misperception yesterday that I've been carrying around for 10 years and I

think it's helpful to talk about these things when we have some sort of insight

or some sort of understanding that we come to. It's helpful to share that with

other people. So I'm going to share something with you today, a little

personal that came out of our prayer time the 21 days of prayer and fasting

that we're doing with our old church in Alabama Church the Highlands and this is

a great exercise to do it twice a year at Highlands and it's a wonderful thing

to start your year by clearing out some junk to get some stuff out of your way,

and just kind of focus on what God has in store for you for the year let him

define your agenda and your pin your plans and your steps and all that well

yesterday here on the whatever it was the 12th or 13th day of the 21 days Since we started something happened that that was important to me. It's one of those.

Foundational formational kind of movements that happened in my heart and my spirit yesterday and I just want to share with you

We're gonna talk a little bit about I'm not sure what to call it suffering substitution.

Or vision correction or however, you want to frame it metaphorically I changed the way I've looked at something that has been making me suffer

for a decade, and I understood it to be something different than it was.

And if you can learn the power of looking back at stories and narratives that you've

held for a long time, the ways that you've looked at some things, and you can switch

to something once you understand it more completely, that's an incredible superpower that will

transform your life and your thinking.

If you can change your mind about that, you can change your life, and you can start today.

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. That place is called self brain surgery. You

can learn it and it will help you become healthier, feel better and be happier. And,

the good news is you can start today.

Thanks Lisa. Hey, so glad to have you listening today. I'm Dr. Lee Warren and I live in Nebraska in the United States of America with my incredible wife Lisa, my father-in-law Tata and the super pups Harvey and Lewis.

I'm a neurosurgeon and an author and I'm here to help you harness neuroscience, the power of your brain, faith, the power of your spirit and good old common sense to help you lead a healthier, better, happier life.

Listen friend, you can't change your life until you change your mind and I'm here to help you learn the art of self brain surgery to get it done.

If you like the show, please subscribe so you never miss an episode and tell your friends about it,

If you tell two or three friends, this podcast was helpful to you. Imagine how much good we can all do around the world together,

I'm dr. Lee Warren and I'm here to help you change your mind so you can change your life. Let's get after.

All right, so self brain surgery Saturday here and I apologize up front. This this episode may be a little bit it's it's,

It's personal. Okay now written about it at the end of I've seen the interview

I told you about losing our son mentioned a little bit about what happened and in my new book

The first few chapters are about the events that occurred and all that told from the point of view though if not memoir, but,

When something really bad happens to you, what do you do next and what's the process?

Which we call it. I call it treatment plan. How do you get that self brain surgery thing engaged?

So you can change your mind about what you're going through and find a path forward instead of a path down to the pit of despair

And doom and death or whatever alcoholism or whatever when something bad happens is a massive thing happens to you, right?

So I'll cover that ground in the books. We're not gonna cover that ground here, but I'm just gonna tell you one story the.

The day before Mitch died August 20th of 2013 is when he died in the day before

He called me. It was the last time I ever spoke to him. I was in the middle of my

day of surgery at the hospital in Alabama and in between cases the timing worked out just right. The phone rang. I looked down and saw it was mentioned. It was, I

took my breath away because we'd been for a few months, we'd been in a little

conflict. We hadn't talked a lot because he was mad. He was struggling like most

teenagers do right he was he was upset and he was not thinking the way I wanted him to think and he decided to go live in Prattville and we lived in

Auburn it's about an hour away and he he'd just been kind of doing his own thing and trying to find his own way and he was dealing with anxiety and and he

just had been making some missteps right like a lot of teenagers do but my phone

rang I looked down and there's Mitch and he's like dad hey Mitch it's good to

hear your voice." And he said, it's good to hear your voice dad. I love you. And I said, I love you

too. He said, I'm sorry, you were right. I've been praying. I need to come home. I need to live

with you and Lisa. I need to get back in Auburn and go back to school. And it's just time for me

to get back on track and get my life back together. And I'm sorry, you were right. I'm ready to come,

home.

And we were filled with this just indescribable joy like God had finally answered all these prayers

We've been praying that the things will be set right and he would be okay and then the next morning

Okay, we wake up with this day the sunshine's dawning and it's beautiful and we're excited

Mitch is going to come home in a couple of days,

And the 21 days of prayer was happening the fall version of the 21 days of prayer in our church,

I'll be doing august at the start of the school year every year,

And that day the prayer focus was the children And it was the youth minister pastor of one of the campuses of Church of the Highlands

And she was leading us in prayer about the kids and she commented on that verse in Nehemiah

Where it says do your work with a sword on your belt and a hammer in your hand basically?

They're building the wall and they're they're building But they're also ready to battle and the scripture says

Because they're under attack and the enemy doesn't want them to build this wall

And so they got to be ready to fight or build at the same time,

And the scripture says be ready fight for your families fight for your children fight for your wives fight for your family, right?

And so that we were praying this powerful prayer We're gonna fight for our kids and we come against the enemy and we're and and we're getting victory here because Mitch is coming home

We're all this stuff and then like 730 that night the phone rings and Mitchell's dead,

Right. He's gone.

And so it felt like this big trick like this big ruse and friend if you've ever been some through something like that work

Where it feels like God's finally doing something and then boom the rugs pulled out from under you and you just don't understand what happened

That's how we felt right then

We were awash in misery and suffering and pain and we just didn't know what to do

It felt like a big trick and for a little bit I was like, I don't even know if I can believe in this guy that could could let that happen

It's one thing if your son just dies, but the fact that we had all this hope that felt,

like it was rekindling, and all of a sudden everything was going to be okay, and then

boom, it was not okay.

That was just unbearable. Okay?

It was unbearable. And so, again, I've covered that ground, I wrote about it a little bit in my new book.

What I'm telling you about this today is that fast forward 10 years, okay, this is the 10th year.

To this year will be 10 years since we lost Mitch. Mitch's 29th birthday will be

next month, February 9th. And so we're 10 years into this thing now, right? And of

course over time your thinking and your feelings about great loss evolve, right?

They don't ever stop being great losses, but your thinking evolves and you understand and you mature and God pulls you through things and you and your

faith develops and you find reasons to hope and you move forward. And for me

that was writing and podcasting and all the things I do every day are all about

how we put our lives back together and followed the trail of hope which led me

frankly back to Jesus as the only rational basis for hope. So all this

work that I've done for 10 years, my therapy and my self brain surgery understanding and all these things I try to teach you, all come out of trying to

find a way forward from that great pain and that great loss, right?

So yesterday Happened just again. We're doing the 21 days of prayer and the youth minister gets up

But the youth pastor the college minister from the Tuscaloosa campus gets up and today yesterday

He says today is the focus on our kids. We're gonna talk about the kids. We're gonna fight for the kids

He quoted Nehemiah again And he said you put this hammer in one hand and the sword in the other one you battling and you build at the same

Time and you fight for your children and you fight for your family and you fight for your wives and you fight for your husband

you fight for your marriage and you fight for the kids and you know just got

mad so you're 10 years later right the guy that writes the books and the guy

that records the podcast your friend that comes talks to you every day I got

really mad and I'm sitting there and we're all doing our individual prayer and you know Lisa's prayers with their eyes closed and Tata walks around and

does his thing and I sit in the chair so nobody can see my face and I'm sitting

and they're crying, and I'm mad.

I'm just like, God, why did you do that? Why did you let us have all that hope?

And why did you let me have that conversation with Mitch and make me think he was coming home?

And you knew all the days in his life before one came to pass,

and you knew that was the last day he was gonna talk to me or the last day he was gonna be on this earth,

and yet you let me spend that prayer time that morning asking you to take care of him

and asking you to bring him home and all that.

Why'd you let that happen and friend? I'm just here to tell you I.

I'm gonna give you a substitute suffering operation here. Okay. I'm here to tell you what happened to me yesterday morning.

Yesterday morning before prayer time. I was drinking coffee and I finished the podcast and and I was,

Looking at Instagram for a second looking at something. I was gonna send to somebody and I found this post that somebody made

And very simply said I learned something this year that was helpful to me and what the person learned was they said,

Pain is mandatory in life, but suffering is optional,

Pain is mandatory, but suffering is optional. So that was in my brain bouncing around somewhere after I'd read that,

Because that made me think about Viktor Frankl when I read his book man search for meaning a few years ago

There's a passage in there where he talks about how mankind is the one who was able to construct,

the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Man can do that horrible thing to somebody else But Frankl said mankind is also the one who can walk into those chambers upright,

With the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on their lips Shema Yisrael is the Lord a hero Israel the Lord our God is one the Lord is our God the Lord is one is the

most holy prayer in the Jewish

tradition so so so Frankl says man can build a gas chamber to make somebody else suffer or

or man can walk upright into those chambers,

with the Lord's prayer on his lips.

He can choose whether he's gonna suffer or he's gonna hold on to faith and hope.

So I had that bouncing around in my head. I had this idea, pain is mandatory,

suffering is optional.

And the pastor's praying, fight for your kids, fight for your family, fight.

And I'm mad, I'm crying, and I'm feeling all that raw emotion.

And I heard, listen, I'm not a charismatic person, okay?

I don't speak in tongues, and I don't think I can raise the dead with my hands, and I don't have that.

Those spiritual gifts are not mine. God has not given me those things.

I don't have the gift of tongues or prophecy or any of those things.

So I'm not a charismatic person.

So when I say I heard God's voice, I don't mean that like the skies parted and the ceiling

blew open and God's sunlight blew down on my face and the dove flew by and I heard an

audible voice that shook the room and all that. That's not what I mean.

In my spirit, I heard as clear as I'm talking to you right now, when I said, like a conversation,

I said, how could you let me pray that?

When you already knew what was going to happen, how could you let me pray?

Bring him home. Heal him. Thank you for restoring my family. Thank you for bringing my son back to me,

when you already knew What was going to happen 24 hours later?

Not even 20 12 hours later. How could you do that? And friend like a like a somebody sitting next to me in the car

Somebody's sitting across the desk from me just as clear as that in my spirit. I heard this,

How do you know I didn't?

Answer your prayer. How do you know? How do you think you can define?

Whether Mitch suffered or whether I was answering that prayer or not. I Was think about it and what I remembered in that moment that hadn't really thought about Lisa and I talked about,

pair of ideas around this a few times,

Over the years, but what I what I remembered was my son Had a problem of feeling comfortable in his own skin

And he was anxious and he didn't handle anxiety very well.

He struggled with it. He suffered under it.

And I couldn't convince him that he could change his mind about it.

Maybe one of the reasons I'm so passionate about trying to teach you how you need to

change your mind, because that's how you change your life, is because I wasn't able to find

the words during his lifetime to give that gift to him.

And it's taken me a long time to figure out how to give it to other people. Maybe that's why.

But I remembered how uncomfortable he was, and how little things weighed him down so much.

And he was a good kid, okay? And he was a believer, and he loved Jesus, but he struggled with this being uncomfortable

in his own skin.

And what God said yesterday was If you really believe that the ultimate aim of mankind is to be with me forever

If you really believe that you're created to make a mark on this earth But also to reflect my glory and also ultimately to be with me forever if you really believe that,

And I'm telling you that I'm taking your son to a place where every tear is dried

and every fear is comforted and every anxiety is eliminated every chain is broken and every bad thing is gone and,

He finally understands his purpose and why he's here and I've got him if you really believe that

Then how can you look me in the eye and ask me why I didn't answer your prayer because I did.

And it just floored me yesterday at ten years later I realized that we have the gift of being able if we trust God enough

If we have enough of his promises built into us if we've read the scripture enough if we've spent enough time getting to know him

And real relationship that prayer and meditation of really walking out the word if we've done that work then his spirit,

Can give us the ability to trust him enough to to substitute our suffering for trust,

To say okay, this is really painful But I don't have to suffer under it because I know it's the purpose

underneath it is gonna lead back to a place where there's peace. I know that. If

I can believe it, if I can put myself on the line enough to trust that what he's doing is ultimately for my good, and by the way, Romans 8 28,

that scripture, all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord,

to conform them to Christ. Don't tell people that in the

acute phase of their pain, okay? Don't use that scripture. It's true, and it turns

out to be incredibly powerful and useful later, but you can't hear that.

In a way that doesn't infuriate you when you're first upset and when you first lost somebody some some preacher told me that,

A few days after mentioned that well, you know all things work together for good

This is going to work out for your good and I wanted to choke it like I literally.

Wanted to choke him. I had rage When he said those words, it's not good that my son died. Don't you tell me that don't stand here in my house

And tell me that it's good for my son to have died. Don't you tell me that?

That's it. That's the thing you can't say to somebody when they first are going through loss

Okay, it turns out to be true and that's this thing up. We talked a lot about quantum physics.

And in quantum physics and I'm no mathematician but I've always been drawn to the beauty of this truth that the quantum physicists have figured out that time is not what we think

it is and,

Reality is not what it looks like in the big scale of the world But when you get down to the quantum level you figure out that weird things happen

and one of the weird things that can happen is an electron can be in two places at once,

and we don't understand that in our finite minds,

but that's why God can say, Jesus can say in John 16, 33, that you're gonna have a hard life,

and at the same time, he can promise you in John 10, 10, that he came here to enable you to have an abundant life.

Okay, hard and abundant.

And that means that you can be in pain, but not have to suffer.

And it can mean that you can walk into the gas chamber upright and still be praying the Lord's Prayer

the shame of Israel. It means that you can look at something terrible and

devastating that happened and still know that God is answering your prayers

through it. But you have to be able to switch your brain to say, I'm gonna let

God redefine what I thought was suffering. I'm gonna let Him be true. I'm gonna let Him be the yes to the prayer that I'm praying, even if the

circumstances don't look like it. I'm going to trust Him enough to transplant

That trust on to him because I can't believe on myself in those moments when life has knocked me out

I gotta believe on him. I gotta put it on him.

Cuz he's good. And so what's gonna happen when you do that? Just like it happened with me yesterday is here

I've got 10 years of looking back and being really Even though I'm even though I'm faithful and even though I believe I'll get to see my son again

I've been really mad about that, but really,

Unhappy about the fact that I got tricked. I felt like the Mitch called me that,

that we prayed for the kids that day so fervently, and we were fasting, we were really digging in

to praying for our family, and then boom, my son's gone. I was mad about that, and it took

until yesterday, it took 10 years for me to finally release that and say, you know what,

your promise in Psalm 124, the look back at history of Psalm 124 is true.

What if the Lord had not been on our side?

The psalmist said david wrote in psalm 124. What if the lord had not been on our side?

When people attacked us they would have swallowed us alive in their burning anger

The waters would have engulfed us a torrent would have overwhelmed us the raging waters would have overwhelmed our lives

But praise the lord who did not let them rip us apart. We escaped the trap is broken

We are free. Our help is from the lord. See david says looks looks back on time and says man

We went through some horrible things,

What if the lord had not been on our side?

And yesterday I was like, holy cow. I was really mad about this for ten years, but maybe he was actually answering my prayer

Maybe Mitch's anxiety and stress was gonna give his life some difficulties and he didn't have to deal with them now,

Now he's free He's been set free from all that and if I really believe in the resurrection and I really believe in eternity

Then I have to believe that Mitch is better where he is than he is here You can't hear that acutely when you're hurting you can't but what if it's true, right?

What if the Lord had not been on our side? What would it what would that have looked like?

So maybe instead of being mad about those prayers and maybe maybe being mad about that phone call,

Maybe I should have looked back and given. Thanks for them,

because he was actually putting Mitch in a position of.

Being set free from all that pain and that's hard for me to think that way but but that's actually,

Another path another quantum physics reality that these two things are both true. It's horrible

I lost my son, but at the same time if I really believe that he was created to be with God,

That's where he is And that's where he's supposed to be So praise God for that and that took me back to Psalm 34. I will praise the Lord at all times

I will constantly speak his praises. So that means you're walking into the gas chamber, right? You're in this life

That's gonna be hard. You're full of all these difficult things, but you're upright with the Lord's prayer on your lips

I will praise the Lord all the time. My pray his praise will always be on my lips,

In verse 4 I prayed to the Lord and he answered me He freed me from all my fears all these horrible things that have scared me so much. I lost my son

How can I be a good parent to my other kids? How can I be a good enough pop for my grandkids?

I couldn't even save my own son and God says wait a minute Lee. I'm that's my job

like I've got this overarching eternal plan for your life and for his and I'm a

good God and I'm and I'm a good good father and you're not responsible for.

What happens on the eternal scale I am so so take that load and put it on me,

let me carry that for you right game-changing yesterday what happens to

transplant of suffering back into pain yes it was painful but it wasn't suffering because I was placing the blame somewhere where it didn't belong

And God, and I was wondering why He wasn't answering my prayers, and He actually was.

That's why Psalm 34 18 turns out to be true. The Lord is close to the broken-hearted,

He rescues those whose spirits are crushed. He's there with you in those moments,

And I look back and I think that song Matt Redmond song never once and I've told you this before but that song came out

Not long after we lost Mitch and I used to run to it and Grove Hill and our neighborhood Morris Mill in Auburn,

There was a path I could run from our neighborhood up the hill to Morris Mill Drive and run out to Morris Mill Road

And and then run down this big hill and there's a long uphill that gets to a street called Grove Hill

And I would turn left at the top of Grove Hill and run another mile down to my friend Rob's Rob Brooks's house

And then back and it was a 10k

Circuit it was a six point two miles.

Just about almost to the step from my front door to Rob's and back and the way I had my playlist put together,

Back in those days on my iPod which we used back then

which now we don't have iPods anymore, but the way I had my playlist put together, just about the top of Grove Hill would hit the chorus of this song

from Matt Redman, Never Once. Never once did we ever walk alone. Never once did

you leave us on our own. You were faithful. God, you were faithful. And so

I'm gonna play that song for you in a second here, and I just remember those

days when I'd be crying and running and mad, and I'd be pounding out my steps

and just frustrated and asking God why and it was almost like a call and response that would get to the top of Grove Hill just about give out and just

about out of gas and just about emotionally spin and he would say never once did you ever walk alone dude you were not alone you might have been in

the gas chamber but you were upright with my prayer on your lips you might have been in the furnace of suffering but you didn't have to suffer even

though it was painful because I had you and you weren't gonna be overwhelmed and

And if I hadn't been on your side, it would have been so much worse.

And I just yesterday friend I was able to reframe a story and narrative that I've held in my heart for so long,

And this is a crucial thing if you can change a narrative a long-held narrative

That's been in your mind and in your heart for a long time and you can actually look at it with new eyes

Like the cataract surgery came out and all of a sudden you can see it clearly in a different way,

Then you can start telling yourself a different story and here's a new story,

Okay, here's a new story for me Here's a new story for us.

God had us in His hands the day before Mitch died, and God gave me an opportunity to hear

my son's voice one more time and to know without any doubt that He was out there thinking

of me and that He loved me.

And at the last words, He heard His Father speak on this side of eternity, where I love

you Mitch, and I'm so proud of you, and I can't wait to see you.

So my son died with my words in his mind and in his heart. He knew I loved him and that matters a lot.

What if our last conversation had been a fight or an argument or just silence or if we hadn't even talked?

Then I would have been devastated with what if, what if, what if, what if? Why not?

Why not? Why not? Instead, I get to know that my son entered his last moments on earth and if he thought

of me in those moments. He knew I loved him. And that means everything to me. So I'm just

telling you, the operation today, the self-brain surgery operation, this very personal episode

here where I've shared a lot of hard things with you, only for the purpose of this, go

back and look at some of the narratives that you've held about some of the hardest things

you've been through. And if those things are still informing how you feel and how you operate

day. You were abused, you lost somebody, you went through this hard thing, you

were betrayed, something XYZ, whatever it was, and if that's informing how you interact with others now, how you relate to the Lord now, how you look out

to the future with hope or not, how you think you are blessed or not, if those

things are still informing you, then reframe that narrative because never once did you ever walk alone. You can change your mind about it, you can change

your life on it. It's Help Brain Surgery Saturday, friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

Hey thanks for listening. Please subscribe to the show so you automatically get every

episode and if you like the show you'll love my weekly letter. Check out my

writing at drleewarren.substack.com. Drleewarren.substack.com.

Get the free newsletter every week for my best prescriptions for becoming healthier, feeling better, and being happier through the power of faith and

neuroscience smashing together via self brain surgeon. Drleewarren.substack.com

and if you need prayer go to the prayer wall at wlewarrenmd.com The theme music for the show is Make Us One by Tommy Walker,

graciously provided for free by the great folks over at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

Check it out and consider supporting them. TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

Remember, you can't change your life until you change your mind, and the good news is

you can start today. I'm Dr. Lee Warren. I'll talk to you soon.

God bless you, friend. Have a great day.

Music.