The Night is Normal with Dr. Alicia Britt Chole

Good morning my friend, I hope you are doing well. Today we're going to talk about the book called The Night is Normal.

The Night is Normal, a guide through spiritual pain by Dr. Alicia Britt Chole.

Now Alicia Britt Chole was somebody I did not know until a few months ago and I was

actually had received an email from Katie Dodilet, who's a publicist at Tyndale.

And Katie said we were working back and forth to try to get one of their authors on my podcast.

We've been working for a while to try to work this out.

One of those interviews that we couldn't get on the same page about the timing and all

that. We finally settled on a date in the fall. And as we were exchanging emails back and forth, she said, hey, I'm going to go out

on a limb here.

I'm going to tell you about an author that I've never told you about before.

It's one of our books coming out soon that we're super excited about.

And she is right up your alley, Katie said. I think Alicia Britt Chole is somebody who writes on stuff that you'll resonate with,

I think your listeners will resonate with.

She said, check out her book, The Night Is Normal, and I want you just to check it out.

I'll send you a copy, an advanced copy, and if you feel like it's a good fit for your

show, let's get her on your show.

And so I was like, well, that's great. I like the title.

I was really compelled by the title, The Night Is Normal, because as you know, we're going

through these massive things in our lives, and sometimes it's not one particular thing.

It's a season where you're going through that it just feels like it's a death by

a thousand cuts the sort of spiritual Ling Chi that all these things are happening that are driving you into this place that feels really dark and it can

start to feel you can start really getting disillusioned if you remember my.

Second book my last book I've seen the interview that the subtitle was faith

doubt and the things we think we know and my whole premise of that was dealing

with people with cancer and terminal illnesses and trying to learn how to to help them when I couldn't cure them with surgery.

And then while writing this book that I thought was gonna be my guide to helping people

who were dealing with life and death issues and hopelessness and all that,

I was when our son Mitch died and I found out I was one of those people

down in that furnace of suffering as Isaiah called it.

And so I wrote this book about sort of the journey that we took in dealing with loss and doubt and faith

and pain and all those things jumbled up together.

And what I hit on really was that the thing that hurts people the most is not cancer,

it's not actually the event, the trauma, it's the hopelessness that can come along from it.

And then really that springs from this attachment that we have to thinking that our emotional state

is tied to our circumstances.

And all of us do it. But when we lose the things we think we know,

we become disillusioned.

And so I've been drawn to books that address that issue of how do we deal when we lose the things we think we know,

when we lose the illusion that we had that our life was gonna play out a certain way,

when the circumstances don't work out the way we want them to, how do we deal with that?

And I read this incredible book.

Tish Harrison Warren calls songs in the night that was about prayers of lament.

I found Mark Rogaps writing about about dark clouds deep mercy and the learning

how to pray these lament prayers and work through those painful times in your

lives and that's one of the reasons that I've loved Philip Yancey's work so much

and Richard Foster's work so much and all of a sudden Katie sends me this book

the night is normal and it's about what to do when the lights go out how do you

find your way when you're in spiritual pain? And so as I normally do because the

audiobook wasn't available yet, I usually if I'm gonna have an author on the show

I do kind of a deep dive and I try to read their other work and and I found

that Alicia's written three previous books one of them is called The Sacred Slow

and it's like how do you how do you slow yourself down and get into this sacred

space where you don't have to be so busy and crazy and hectic all the time? And I

read that while I was running, listened to the audiobook while I was running and

working out, found it very encouraging, love her voice

as a narrator of her own work and I love her writing voice.

And then the second book really just blew me away, her book called Anonymous, it's like what do you do

during these seasons of your life when you feel like nobody sees you, nobody notices you, what do you do?

How do you handle those times when it feels like you're invisible?

And she used the Jesus story of the 30 years of his life that we don't know about, what happened to Jesus.

Between age 12 at the temple and age 30 when he shows up on the scene in his ministry.

What's he doing in terms of spiritual formation during those times?

And it's a tremendous book. One of the best books I've ever read on spiritual formation.

It's right up there with Richard Foster and others. And so I was nerding out on her work

when I got into the text of The Night Is Normal before we had the interview with her.

And this was several weeks ago now that we got together on Zoom and recorded.

And so I just want to give you a little bit of preamble about this book before we get into this incredible interview.

I'm going to give you two more songs from the Hope is the First Dose playlist

during this episode, because this conversation with Alicia went,

we could have talked for hours.

We were one of those people that I could have just talked to for hours and hours.

And I think I'll have her back on the show. I'm going to have her back on the show someday

to talk about her book, Anonymous.

And some ideas around spiritual formation. But as we talk, I thought, this is an episode

that I'm gonna break up into two segments because there's so much meat here.

She's, there's just no superficial fluff here. This is a deep conversation.

And in the middle of it, she leads us in a prayer.

And at the end of that prayer, I'm gonna give you a song from Need to Breathe called Seasons.

And it's this idea that we're in for nasty weather. There's stuff coming.

There's massive things coming.

And I'm gonna ride it out with you. I'm gonna hang in there with you, with Jesus,

with God, with you at my side, and I'm gonna be your friend with you every day on the podcast.

I'm gonna ride this nasty weather out with you.

And sometimes the nasty weather is the night, it's a season of darkness, a season of pain,

a season when it feels like God is far away.

And what Elisha's gonna teach us today is that the night is normal,

that God made the light and the darkness, that God made the day and the night.

He gave us the sun to rule the day, but he didn't leave us in the dark.

He gave us the light of the moon and the stars at night, and he's always there.

And nighttime is a time to process this disillusionment and learn to deal with it and heal from it

and move through it and look for that light again. And the night turns out to be normal,

and not just normal, but an important part of learning how to deal with disillusionment

and moving through that.

Before we get into her conversation, I'm gonna read a couple of things for you.

One is a prayer that I got from Tish Harrison Warren's book,

Songs in the Night, that's actually from the Book of Common Prayers.

She didn't write the prayer, but she brought it forth, and that's the first time I'd encountered it.

And I just wanna give you this little prayer.

If you listen to this episode in the evening or at night, or if you listen to it during the day,

but take this prayer and say it at nighttime and just kinda get into this idea

of thinking about what happens in the night.

And here's the prayer.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work or watch or weep this night, and give your angels charge

over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Jesus.

Give rest to the weary. Bless the dying. soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted,

shield the joyous, and all for your love's sake, amen.

Here's what I'm praying for you, friend. I'm praying that if you're in the middle

of your massive thing, if you're in the middle of a season that feels like the night,

or if you're just disillusioned, you've lost the things that you thought you knew,

and somebody's dying, or somebody was unfaithful,

or something's hurting you, or you're just in a dark night of the soul, and you don't know

exactly what's happening, this is for you, and our prayer for you is that God will keep watch

over you during that time and that you will find

that the night is normal and it's a process for you

that God can use for your healing.

At the end of this episode, I'm gonna play another song from an artist named Ellie Holcomb called Red Sea Road.

And this is the idea that sometimes we're on a road, we're coming out of some place like the Egyptians,

like the Israelites came out of Egypt and God deliberately freed them from their captivity and put them

on the Red Sea Road, but they weren't delivered yet.

They weren't there yet. They had a journey to take.

And it seemed impossible because they were being pursued by the Egyptian army and they had a sea in front of them,

right, and it looked impossible.

But our God is a God who if he puts you on the road, he will open the sea for you.

He'll make a way for you where there is no way. Remember the scripture, he'll make a way

where there is no way.

He'll make streams of living water in the desert. If you're thirsty, he'll provide water for you.

If you're hungry, he'll provide manna and quail.

If you're in the dark, he'll provide light. He'll move with you, he'll camp among you,

He will lead you, He will part the waters for you. This is a God who even if you're on the Red Sea Road,

will make a way for you.

And so I just wanna encourage you that if you're in that season of the night,

it is not too late for you.

And we have an incredible teacher, mentor, and guide here with us.

Alicia Britsch Chole is a speaker, award-winning author and mentor.

Her raw faith and love for God's word holds the attention of saints and skeptics alike.

I love that part of her bio.

Her previous works, as I said, Anonymous, 40 Days of Decrease, and The Sacred Slow.

The new book is The Night Is Normal. I'm gonna read you something right now.

Reality is a merciful illusion breaker, but the process can be deeply unsettling. Why?

Gerald May explains that since the night involves relinquishing attachments,

it takes us beneath our denial into territory we were in the habit of avoiding.

Resisting the night, we try to push it back with the feeble light of human understanding.

Reason desperately attempts to hold faith in place, which is difficult to do when faith,

is growing. guard shed.

It's precisely to lose one's understanding in order to win God.

In other words, our greatest thoughts are still too small. When in pain, we have to decide what we love more and what our faith is really in.

Is our love and faith in God or in our understanding? The former will always be too big for the latter.

He is bigger.

He is better. He created us to be with Him and His companionship is enough, even in the night.

Listen, friend, this book that I'm holding in my hand, this beautiful book, The Night

is Normal, A Guide Through Spiritual Pain by Dr. Alicia Britt Chole, is one of those

books that will change your heart and change your mind.

Because remember, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And if you're in the season of darkness, you need to change your mind.

Disillusionment is not always bad. It's not always a bad thing to be in the dark

because God's got a plan for you. And he made the night too.

And he will help you change your mind. And he will help you change your life.

And Dr. Alicia Bertioli is gonna help us get it done.

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?

Well, 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.

I've got really an incredible writer and a leader in the kingdom who's doing great things.

And her new book is right up your alley.

If you're a longtime listener of this show, you are listening because something hurt and

you're trying to find your way back again. And I've got an incredible guest today.

Dr. Alicia Britt Scholey is with us today. Welcome to the show, Alicia.

Oh, thank you so much, Lee. It's an honor to be here. A joy to meet you.

And I am so anticipating holding your book. So I've already, I get the listeners background on you, but give us the 30,000 foot view of

who you are and what's going on in your world.

Sure. Jesus in his mercy interrupted my atheistic worldview weeks before I was beginning my university studies.

I sincerely believed that there was no God.

And so I went from there is no God to, oh my God, in about 90 minutes, one very unexpected

day. The presence of Jesus, the person of Jesus, his creativity, his breadth, his infiniteness

captivated me and has captivated me for decades now. So fast forward and I am now graced to

live in the country of Missouri and out where the stars shine bright. I have three children

through the miracle of adoption, my truly good man of a husband, Barry and I have been

married 32 years. And we spend our days investing in the health, the soul health of leaders around the world.

Wow. And along the way, you started writing books. What led to that?

Yes, that was very unexpected. I've always loved writing. I've loved words. I like their

fabric. I like their texture. I've been a journalist for a long time. And then one day

I was speaking at a church and a wonderful woman came up to me and she said, Hey, do you write?

And I just thought she was making conversation, so I said, Oh, I love writing. I love journaling.

And anyway, within two weeks, there was this book contract on my desk asking me to contribute

and write a devotional, sweet little devotional called Pure Joy.

And I found out that writing was, oh my, I don't know, it felt like a dance.

Was like therapy for me. I just loved the process. And so that was the beginning and

And then every once in a while, a door opens to write what's next in my heart.

And I walk through it with joy, but I'm not somebody who writes every day, regardless of the weather.

There's opportunities come, something's in my soul, and I'm very grateful to be able

to offer it. Wow. Let's talk for a minute about your other works.

I've read two of your books before, the new one, The Sacred Slow and Anonymous, right?

I think both of those are really going to segue into the conversation we're going to

have because they're very helpful.

I love looking back on a writer's career and seeing the breadcrumbs that got them from

from point A to point B, and you can do that with my work. And it's interesting.

So talk about those other two books for a moment.

I think it'll help to understand where you got to the night is normal.

Sure. A little bit of backstory. The fact is, having come from being an atheist and then walking in a relationship with God,

at first, when people tried to put Bibles in my hands, I just thought, what nonsense?

I mean, what absolute nonsense? But when I started walking with God, I just all of a sudden realized that it wasn't a

book, it was a voice, and I love to hear the voice.

And so over the years, I just listened to and studied the voice.

It's like having pots of stew on the stove, and they simmer for years and years.

So Anonymous came into being when a literary agent said, if you could write one thing, what would it be?

And I said, there's this soup I've had simmering for eight years, and I would love to be able to offer it.

And it was anonymous. It was a study of Jesus's hidden years and what we can learn about his years and our

years through the window of the temptation, because Jesus wasn't just dropped on the planet at the age of 30.

He had these three hidden decades in which he was saying yes to his father.

And the strength that we see in his visible years wasn't instantly acquired, it was growing,

choice after choice, hidden year after hidden year, after hidden decade.

And so by studying his first visible choices, it opens up a window and we can see what God

grows in us, what he grew in Jesus in these unaccountable ways.

Expected seasons where we feel like somebody pressed the pause button on our potential,

or we feel unseen or underappreciated. So that was the birth of Anonymous.

That was an incredible book and I'm going to be recommending it to my listeners and my readers of my Substack work because I found it to be particularly useful

in the in the fact that your character and who you are depends on where you've been and what

you've done. And so we see Jesus show up at age 30 after all those just little bits of what he was

as a child and is dealing with massive spiritual warfare and he's built the character and you

talk about the iceberg principle.

So give us just a second about that.

Yes. So scientists tell us that almost 90% of an iceberg is submerged in the unseen.

Only a 10th is visible and with that proportion because of their enormous mass, apart from

global warming, icebergs are virtually indestructible.

So this principle emerges, this almost equation emerges that 10% visible plus 90% unseen can

equal an indestructible life.

And the most indestructible life in all of history, Jesus has reflected that iceberg equation.

Only 10% really of his life is visible, three years. Almost 90% of his life was submerged in the unseen and all of his life was and is absolutely

indestructible.

So, as we read through the Gospels, we see Jesus' birth, followed by hidden days, his

circumcision followed by hidden months, his dedication followed by hidden years.

We find him visited by magi at the age of two, followed by more hidden years.

We see him asking questions at the age of 12, followed by almost two entirely hidden

in decades until those 30 years of anonymity are shattered.

And Jesus walks into debated and documented, celebrated and scrutinized history.

But when we say something like, I want to be like Jesus, we are not talking about his hidden years. No.

No. Or his wilderness temptation or his pain or his massive thing, as we read about in your amazing book.

We're not talking about the pain points in his life. We want to skip those.

That Jesus's authority and his character come with his life.

And in that life, we walk through pain. Wow, I'm sad that we didn't have you on

when that book came out, because we were going to nerd out with you

for a whole episode about that book.

Maybe we can do that another time. I would love that. So let's pivot then to the sacred slope.

This might surprise you, but neurosurgeons, some of them are out of balance in their work and life.

Some of them are workaholics, and perhaps some of the people listening can relate to that.

So let's talk about the Sacred Slow for a second.

Yes, yes. I've often heard extremely productive, very successful people say,

why on earth would I wanna do anything slow, Alicia?

What on earth is the purpose of that? The Sacred Slow is about a departure from fast faith.

A faith that goes from event to event, adrenaline rush to adrenaline rush,

podcast to captivating song to mesmerizing book.

The Sacred Slow is an invitation to see every slow second as the opportunity to be present to God. Wow.

So, I can remember God's presence in the past, and I can with confidence anticipate God's

presence in the future, but I can only be present to God's presence in this moment,

which means this moment is full of potential for knowing Him, for being loved by Him, for

loving others toward him as any ever has been and any ever will be.

So this second, this slow second, is sacred. And if we can apply our minds to not just think about God but think with him, that's,

what we can do. So, thank you.

In this second, the potential we have for growing weatherproof devotion to intimacy.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

With nearness with God expands beyond really our dreams.

Wow. Amazing. That's exactly right. We just read, Lisa and I and my wife prayed through a book called Every Moment Holy.

And the idea is a liturgy. Basically can you take this podcast and make it holy?

Can you take the, like Tish Harrison Warren said, can you make this peanut butter?

Jelly Sandwich. Holy, can you make it a prayer? And I love it. So another, that's a whole

another episode we could have had right there, Lisa. But the reason you're here, your wonderful

publicist, Katie from Tyndale, found out about me a few years ago and feeds me incredible

books to talk to their authors. And it's been such a joy and a blessing over the years to

get to know Michael Gillan and several of the Tyndale authors, Alisa Childers, and just.

It's been great. And so she said, Hey, what about this book, The Night Is Normal? And

And I said, let me check it out.

And I wrote her back and said, yes, I want Alicia on my show.

Because what I found is I started listening to her other books and reading The Night Is

Normal is I'm learning from you.

And the thing I'm learning from you, the most important thing that I think, friend, if you're

listening and you've been in that night, that darkness that grief plunges you into or loss

of these massive things that happen in our lives, you start hearing people say, hey,

there is still light out there and there is hope again and you can find it.

But I think Alicia, you gave me something new to think about, and that is that the night

can be a blessing, and there's a way to see it and understand that you can grow during

that time, you can be blessed during that time.

So talk to us about The Night Is Normal for a little bit, and we'll have a conversation

about that, because you really helped me change my mind about that a little bit, and I'm grateful for you.

Oh, thank you, and truly, thank you. This book, The Night Is Normal, is the overflow of 30 years for me, Lee.

This is 30 years of study, 30 years of living through unexpected pain, through massive things

and anyway, I'm just so incredibly grateful that it's being offered, that we get a chance to talk about it.

So when we go back to the very, very beginning, Lee, in the beginning, the original residence

of Eden, if we look at the beginning of Genesis, night was one of the original residents.

God made day, he made night, he made the greater light to govern the day, the lesser light

to govern the night, which means that pre-fall, pre-drama, pre-pain, pre-sin, pre-curse, before

at all, walking with God required day faith and night faith.

So that means the night is normal, and I push it a little further to say not only is the

night normal. The night is necessary.

Yeah, the night is normal. We examine through a powerful word disillusionment. Yeah.

And if we were to break up that word, just the prefix dis means removal or negation.

The noun illusion means false ideas or ideals. The suffix meant is the act of.

So disillusionment is the act of removing false ideas and ideals.

And that's what happens in the night.

In the night, we lose illusions about God, about ourself, and about others.

The thing is, though, that hope is baked into the concept of disillusionment, which makes

it distinct from other words like skepticism or despair.

Hope is baked into disillusionment, because to lose an illusion is to have an opportunity

to gain a reality, and it just makes sense that finite us, in relationship with infinite

God, that there is mystery in that relationship.

There's loads of mystery. We are continually getting things wrong and having the opportunity to get things more

right.

We are continually losing illusions and gaining reality, and in that process, gaining a more

accurate picture of God, that he is near, but to borrow something from C.S. Lewis, he's

He's not tame, he's personal, but he's not pliable.

He is with us, but he is not us. We're gaining illusions, losing illusions and gaining reality about the God that we're

following. So the potential in the night is massive. It's extraordinary. That's amazing.

Listen, I'm going to take you back, friend, for a second to my second book.

I've seen the interview. The subtitle was Faith, Doubt, and the Things We Think We Know.

And that references this idea that our lives are built around things that we think we've

got figured out. And Alicia makes this beautiful point and I'm gonna quote my favorite line,

I've got it in here in my Evernote file. Alicia, my favorite line of the book is your personal

definition of disillusionment. You said, my personal definition of disillusionment is

the painful gaining of reality. That's what I figured out when I was dealing with people

with glioblastoma and fatal brain tumors and trying to take care of them even though I

I couldn't fix them, was the thing that shakes people up the most is losing, finding out

that something they thought was true isn't true.

And it turns out, as you've pointed out now in The Night Is Normal, that's not always

devastating. It can also be opportunity.

It's just beautiful what you've done. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Yes.

The losing of illusions and the gaining of reality doesn't mean that our faith has failed.

It means that our faith is growing. One of the things that I describe in the book is it's almost as though our concepts of God

are like these beautiful balloons.

Every once in a while we hear the startling pop as they break.

That just means that God's bigger than we thought he was, that he's more complex than we assumed he was.

And beautiful, I think, parallel image is the infant's description and understanding of their parent.

The infant may think of mom as milk in the beginning or mom as eyes and hands.

And later on, the infant may realize that mom is a distinct being but whose entire purpose

is to care for a child.

And there is this evolution and an understanding of who mom is.

But even as mom passes, she'll still be a lovely mystery, even beyond that point.

The adult now will still have wonders and awe about who mom was.

And even though literally mom is not milk, that is inaccurate, but it's still a very

healthy perspective for the child's development. And this is what happens in our relationship with God.

He continually is much bigger than we ever thought, but even at the very end of our days,

He will still be this glorious mystery that we continue to explore after death.

Amen. That's right.

So what's the deal then with doubt, and how does doubt relate to faith, and is doubt bad

or is doubt okay? What's the story with doubt from your perspective?

Yes. I mean, having been an atheist, this definitely shapes me.

I view doubt as a growing pain of faith.

I think doubt is something that accompanies us. If we could go back to think about somebody like John the Baptist, right?

So at the waters of the Jordan, he's look, behold, the Lamb of God, go follow him.

But within the walls of his prison, he sends word through his disciples to Jesus and he

says, hey, listen, are you the one I was waiting for?

Should I wait for somebody else? He was doubting the identity of Jesus.

And that's what happens in the night. That's what happens when all of a sudden we're in a prison.

That's what happens when there is no light anymore. And it was after this point that Jesus said.

John the Baptist is the greatest one that's ever been born among women. He affirmed John.

And so the problem isn't that we have doubts. I think honest humans have doubts.

I think the challenge is what do we do with them? What direction do we face with them? Do we turn our back toward God and try to process our doubts on our own? Or do we

turn toward him? Do we say, hey, listen, are you who I thought it was or should I wait for somebody

else? Like Mary and Martha, we say, listen, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died.

Like the disciples in the boat, do we say, don't you care if we drown? We're drowning here.

And so, honesty is a friend of intimacy with God.

And when doubt leads us to honesty, fantastic. When doubt leads us to have honest questions that we direct toward God, that means our

faith is growing.

So I don't villainize doubt. I circle around it in curiosity, and I find that most often it is a growing pain of faith.

Philip Yancey said that many people think that faith is the opposite of doubt, but he

defined it as the opposite of faith is fear, and doubt can point us from one to the other.

And I think that's exactly where you're going with this. So somebody listening, I have this prayer wall on my website, and people write in and

put in prayer requests, and people all over the world praying for each other, and somebody

tonight is going to get on there and say, I just lost my husband, or I just got a bad

diagnosis or my grandkids won't talk to me anymore. There's always something out

there. So for the listener, Alicia, who today is their day when they hit that

massive thing and they're plunged into the darkness, what do you say like acute

phase reaction to that person to help them today? What do you say?

Yes

I would encourage face God with the pain to the extent you can even wrap words around it.

Yet you may need to just sit in silence and mourn, but face him with the mourning.

You may be at a point already where you're yelling, then face him with your screams.

You may be at a place where you don't think you like him or love him,

then face him with your discouragement. Honesty is an incredible friend of both mental and spiritual

and emotional and physical health. Be as honest as you possibly can and know that he is near.

I think back to the massive things in my life again, alluding to your book, which is

It's going to be such a gift to so many generations.

And that ability to, like Job, sit in the ashes and be honest with God, that's faith.

Faith is not a spiritualized form of optimism.

We have more potential for great faith when we feel nothing and wonder what we believe

than when we feel great and think we know all the answers.

We are poised for some of the greatest contributions of faith in our mass of things when we're,

sitting in the ashes.

Because there's something about honesty, there's something about especially honest questions.

The purpose of honest questioning isn't getting answers, it's building trust.

That's what we're doing through our honesty.

And so as we face God with our honest whatever it happens to be, we're actually building

trust at the very time when it feels like our God concepts are being shredded and shattered.

That's right. This feels like that time you're encouraging our listener here who's going through the

massive thing. And earlier, I asked you if you would pray for us, and I forgot to ask you to as we started

the episode. So this is the time. Let's pray for that person right now. Yes.

Say a prayer. Yeah. Bye.

Lord, you see my brother, you see my sister, their world seems to be falling apart.

Things that they loved have been ripped from their hands. It is dark. It is dark even within them.

God, you are the one who keeps our lamp burning. You are the one who turns our darkness into light

And you are breathing right now into that soul.

You are breathing hope. You are breathing faith. You are breathing love.

And so I pray for my brother and sister on the edge of despair.

I pray for them, that they could do what any good patient needs to do, be still, and let

the surgeon do his work, to be still and trust the surgeon.

And God, I pray that in their stillness, that your love would surround them and protect them.

I pray that as they wait for dawn, that your hope would support them.

And I pray most of all, God, that you would grant them the courage to be brutally honest

and face you with the pain.

Because I know, as centuries, as millennia of followers of you have affirmed, I know

that when we face you, that you take that pain and you forge it into a substance we

in this generation desperately need, a substance of purified love, the substance of character.

In Jesus's name I commit them to you.

Music.

Amen. Thank you. You made me cry on my own podcast. Thank you for that.

Even Derwin Gray, Derwin Gray last week, Dr. Derwin Gray made me cry on my own podcast.

It's only two times that's happened.

So technical foul, Alicia. Hey, something I want to ask you about.

So sometimes the night, the dark thing that's happening in our lives

happens not after a massive thing has occurred.

Sometimes we just go into this season where everything feels dim, and God feels far away.

Some people have called that a dark night of the soul, and what is that all about?

So talk to us about that for a minute.

Yes, and that's a very accurate description of my first night.

I just thought myself into a cold place that seemed absent of God.

I had been wrestling with theological issues, trying to wrap my mind around things that

were beyond me and just thought myself into a place where it felt like I was losing my grip on God.

I remember a day in a park, Lee, when I felt like after Jesus had saved me, after he had

captivated me, now I was about to fail him.

My faith was failing me, like I was holding on with all my might to my last sliver of faith.

And this kind of thing can happen apart from a crisis. We think of, when I read the writings of some people that I want to read more from, Oswald

Chambers and some of the great C.S. Lewis and people whose voices are so timeless, every

single one of them speaks about a space where they either went for at least months, sometimes

years, I've even read of decades, where they felt nothing of the presence of God, or everything

Everything they were teaching and saying sounded hollow, where they were proclaiming things

that they weren't sure they believed anymore.

And so people who study the dark night, they speak of two different types of night, a dark

night of the senses where you feel nothing, and a dark night of the soul where you're

not sure you believe anything anymore.

And these can creep up on you. we can pin them down to a specific event, a specific tragedy.

But often, they just come, winter, Lee. Winter just comes.

There's nothing I can do to make spring stay. There's nothing I can do to prolong summer.

There is just a time when winter comes. It will not last forever, but I can't prevent it from starting and I can't make it shorter.

These are winter seasons of our faith that God does not waste, and they purify love.

When you still follow God, when you feel nothing, your love is purified and really that's what's

going to change the world.

It's not going to be happiness.

It's going to be a purified, sturdy love that can speak when the lights go out, that can

speak in the middle of pain, that can speak in tragedy and not platitudes, but something

of substance that's been lived and that has seasoned our own souls.

This normalness of the night that you describe, you used another metaphor in I think the Sacred

Slow if I'm not mistaken, where you talked about in the wintertime, the leaves fall off

the trees and you can see better.

So it's cold and there's bad stuff going on, but it clarifies your ability to see the birds

and there's still some beautiful stuff happening in there. I think that's what those dark night periods are,

it's where God's doing some formation in us.

It's like when the teacher walks out of the room and has you working on something by yourself

for a little while, but they're not gone. They're still there.

And I don't know, that's how it feels to me. Yes, I agree.

Yeah, I agree. In the summer, we're really distracted by all the tree's leaves, or the tree's fruits,

or the tree's flowers.

But in winter, it's barren, and so you really can only stare at its foundation.

They can stare at its structure, and that's what happens in the night.

We're less distracted by our own successes, less distracted by our own optimism,

and we have an opportunity to stare at our structure

and to truly be strengthened.

Nobody signs up for it. I don't. I don't sign up for these things, but when they come, I know they won't be wasted.

That's right. And they will come. That's the point. These things come for everyone.

If you don't have pain, you need to check your pulse because there's something that's going to happen.

Now, two things you said earlier, I want to circle back to. I don't want to forget.

One, you were talking about how these nighttime periods can give you an opportunity to review how you love God,

how you view people, other people, and you said a phrase that I've not heard before,

love people towards him.

What does that mean, and is that the same thing that somebody did for you?

You mentioned in your book how you had a persistent friend who wasn't going to let you alone

in your atheism. So is that what loving people towards God means?

Yes. Great question. That particular phrase is, I'm sure I'm not the first one to state it, but it captures

my life goal, my personal life vision to love God, to live loved by God and to love others toward God. Wow.

That's what I hope my life, however long it is, that's what I hope the fruit of it is.

When I think of what to me it personally means to love others toward God, to me it means

to be near enough, to be loved like a teddy bear with the ears raw from all its loving.

But there's a scent of love that awakens people.

My eldest, who's on the autistic spectrum, we were at a gas station once just filling

up and the receipt wasn't coming out of the machine.

So I walked in and then I walked back out and I sat back in the car and Jonathan said,

I've got to ask you something." I said, of course, love. What do you want to ask?

And he said, mom, you walked in and you had a smile on your face. Nobody else did, mom.

And you walked out and you were still smiling. You're in the car. You're about to drive. You're

smiling. Well, I don't understand. Where does the smile come from? You've always got to smile.

And I had to think because I wanted to be truthful.

And I said, you know what, love, I think that Mama smiles because Mama knows she's loved.

I know that I'm loved.

When Jesus first interrupted my life, Lee, the very first thing I did was call two girls

and I'll tell you about them, the ones who loved me toward God.

I had just been, I was terrible. Our debates were brutal.

They were in tears. It was just devastating. But I called them and I said, hey, Sean, guess what?

I said, I met him and she's, oh, what's this one's name?

And I'm like, no, I met Jesus. I met your Jesus. And I rattled on about this incredible encounter I had.

And she told me, she said, I do not appreciate your new attempt to mock my faith.

And she hung up on me because that's how antagonistic I had been.

She didn't believe me until I got home and she saw my face and she saw the smile.

And it was from knowing that I was deeply loved to the point where I would never be abandoned.

And I think one of the greatest gifts that we can give to others and to this generation

is to realize how fully and deeply we are loved.

Because when you lead because you're loved, not to be loved, when you serve because you're

loved, not to be loved. You lead and you serve differently. You live and you die differently.

So honestly, that is my greatest hope that the night is normal.

That we will surrender to these seasons where our love is being purified,

and not only to discover the depths of God's love for us, but so that we can carry that well-lovedness with us

into a world that's in desperate need.

Wow. It's going to do that. This is one of those books, friend,

that is going to give you a new perspective on your life, because these things are going to happen in your life.

And Alicia is a trusted guide who you can hold on to her leadership and follow her through these times.

And I found myself, I was running the other morning and I was like, this lady is teaching me stuff.

I've been a Christian for my whole life and I'm learning things that I never thought about before.

So you've done a good job and I think it's really going to help people and the Lord's

going to. Another guest I had a while back said, God told me to take care of the depth and he'll

take care of the breadth of what happens with this book. And that's exactly what we do, right?

If it's one reader or if it's a million or a hundred million, you took care of the depth

and I'm telling you, friend, this is one of those books that's going to go deep with you.

I have one more question for you or two more, two more questions based on things you said.

One, so my listeners, we talk every episode about something I call self-brain surgery

because it's this idea that you can't change your life until you change the stuff you think about, right?

And you said that you thought yourself into this dark time. So what did you mean exactly by that?

Thought yourself into this? Yes. Faith is a duet. We live it with God.

Yep. But more often than not, we live faith like a solo in our mind. We think

alone. We self-guide. Yep. I think one of the most powerful steps in spiritual

formation we can take is to start developing the discipline of asking God

to mentor our mind. Yeah. It's a simple sentence. It's, Jesus, what do you want to

think about together now? Jesus, do I have permission to think with you about this at

this time? Jesus, where do you want to go in my thoughts today? What I meant by saying

I thought myself into exhaustion is I was thinking solo. I was thinking outside of the

permission of God. Sometimes I think about it like the illustration of chasing horses.

My dogs, we live out in the country and my dogs chase horses and one of these days they're

going to get the wind kicked out of them.

We have this tendency, like my puppies, to wander and to chase horses.

Now there are some horses we're going to be able to ride in the future, but if we ride

them prematurely or we attempt to, we're going to get the wind kicked out of us.

So how do we respond to that reality? We ask God to mentor our mind.

We think as a duet instead of as a solo. We think with Him. We ask Him to lead.

We want Him to lead our feet. need him to lead our thoughts. That's right. And thinking with him, we're still in safe territory.

Wow. We have two rules that we talk about of self brain surgery. If you want to be not

committing malpractice against yourself and all the cheesy surgical medical, but the two

rules are things you just addressed. Not every thought that you have is true. Not every thought

that you have is true. In fact, from a neurochemical standpoint, about five to one, the thoughts

that you have are not true. They're just, they're just thoughts that are generated by

synapses from your whole life and they're just firing all the time. And most thoughts

that pop into your head aren't truth. The second one is feelings aren't facts. Feelings

are neurotransmitter events in your brain and they don't always point to true things.

So you just described that whole process beautifully and I love that we're reinforcing that thought

process here today for the listener. The last thing I want to give you or ask of you, I

promised you 45 minutes, we're coming right up on it. I don't want to take too much of

your time today, but you talk about these nighttime periods, Alicia, and really you

can get into them in three different modes. You can be disillusioned with God or disillusioned

with other people or disillusioned with yourself. I think we should parse those out for a minute

because they're important. Yes. So disillusionment, losing illusions, gaining reality about God.

Looks like that process where we move from Jesus loves me, this I know,

to times where we're in the Garden of Gethsemane of, hey, can this cup pass?

Is there any way in which there's another option, another door, if so, I want to take.

It. It's where we are moving from our thoughts about what God does and disillusioned by the,

evidence that we see of his participation in our life.

This is when a loved one dies. This is when we hear cancer from the doctor.

We start losing illusions about what a good God allows. Disillusionment with ourself is what Peter experienced.

He went from, even if everybody deserts you, I won't, I'll die for you, Jesus, to denying

Jesus before the rooster crowed three times. This is when fear surprises us and we realize that there were fault lines in our commitment

to God.

Disillusionment with others, we are well acquainted with. That's when the people of God are who we needed them to be.

And to be honest, personally, that has been as dark of a night as the other two have been for me.

That's the one that took me more by surprise when pain comes from around God's table.

And so In The Night Is Normal, we show biblical examples of all of this.

And then I offer, I think, around 24, 25 practical tools to help navigate those different types

of night in our lives.

Wow. Amazing. It's a great work. a studied work from a real thinker.

And I love it. There's graphs and there's word studies and people who listen to my show,

we're always nerding out on the Hebrew and the Greek and what stuff means.

And so listen, you're gonna love it. It's right up your alley of the kind of thing

that I'm always telling you that you're gonna love.

And so I can't wait to hear your feedback on this episode. Click the like button on Substack or wherever you listen

and put some comments in there because I'll send them all to Alicia and she'll see them

and she'll be encouraged with the work that she's doing.

30 more seconds. So what's the word you have for us today that we need to be thinking about as we part today?

Yeah, I think the word would be a quick story. When I was little, my dad didn't want me

to be afraid of the dark. He didn't want me to be afraid of storms.

And so every time there was a night storm, we would go sit on the porch together

and we would watch it come in and he'd tuck me under his arm.

And I learned to associate night storms with an opportunity to rest with my dad.

So I would say to those listening, if you're in a night storm, I know it's dark

and I know the wind is frightening, but there is an opportunity here.

God has you tucked under his arm and he is near you. Be encouraged, your night won't last forever.

It is normal, but it's also necessary.

Amen. Dr. Alicia Britt Shulley, great to have you with us today.

Thank you for writing this book and for the body of work that you've put out there.

Great job, keep it up.

Thank you, thank you so much. Dr. Warren, it's been a joy to be with you

and I absolutely look forward to your offering as well.

Thank you. Oh my goodness, I told you that was amazing talk and I can't wait to have Dr. Alicia back on the show.

I can't encourage you highly enough, friend. The night is normal.

I think it's a perfect compliment really to hope is the first dose.

These two books are gonna help you when you're dealing with hard things.

But if you're in a season.

Where you feel like it's dark and you're in the night and you don't know what to make of it

and you feel disillusioned and you feel like you've lost some of those things that you know.

The Night Is Normal by Dr. Alicia Britt Shirley will help you, it will encourage you, it will guide you.

She's a mentor and teacher.

I felt kind of like I was talking to a sister or like a mentoring type figure as we spoke,

like I was learning things from her actively.

And Lisa and I are both reading her books now and just incredible person.

And I'm so grateful to Katie Dodley of Tyndale for hooking us up and Katie, shout out to you.

This book is a game changer and I'm so grateful to have had a chance to sit down with Dr. Chole

and give you just a taste of what you can learn from her.

Be praying for her book's success because people need this message right now.

They need to know that the night is normal.

Our society thinks everything has to be about being happy and making yourself feel good and pursuing your own thing

and finding your own truth and all that And what's happening is it's that lifestyle

and that pursuit of feeling is putting us in a place where nothing feels right because it doesn't produce joy.

And we just get further and further in the dark of confusion and wondering why it's not working.

And we need some hope.

And this book, my friend, will give you some hope. It'll help you see that the night is normal.

Remember, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And sometimes you need to change your mind about what the night means.

And Dr. Alicia Britt Chole's book, the night is normal will help you get that done.

And the good news is you can start today. I'm gonna leave you with the Red Sea Road song

from Ellie Holcomb. Remember, we serve a God who will put us on the road and it'll seem impossible sometimes.

You'll say, I don't have any water and he'll give you water from a rock.

You'll say, I don't have anything to eat. He'll give you manna or quail.

You'll say, I don't have any light. He'll say, I'll be with you in a pillar of cloud or a fire.

I'll be with you. I will lead you. I will guide you.

And you'll say, well, I'm about to run off into this ocean.

He'll say, I'll part the waters.

Just keep going. We serve a God who does impossible things as a matter of routine.

Because he's the guy that has invented quantum physics and he's in charge of it all.

So listen friend, you hang in there and you press through even in the night

because the night is normal.

And that's why you can change your life by changing your mind.

And you can start today.

Music.

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 things.

It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audio book

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Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

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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 Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your life,

until you change your mind.

And the good news is you can start today.

Music.