You're Not Always in a Fight

Hey, Lisa. Hey, Lee. It's good to see you today. It's good to see you, too.

Will you help me with something? Of course. I can't remember what day it is.

It's frontal lobe Friday. Good morning, my friend. I hope you're doing well.

It is frontal lobe Friday.

This is Dr. 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 Good Place.

It's a book that I wrote about how you're not always in a good place.

It's a book that I wrote about how you're not always in a good place.

It's a book that I wrote about how you're not always in a good place.

And 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.

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? 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 just to teach us to remember.

That no matter what we feel, you're not always in a fight.

Kurt 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. This is an important episode,

and 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 of all the things he done, that he did, we're the only created beings that have the gift of selective attention.

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 lobe friday I want you to remember that you're not always in a fight and you can choose what you're going to think about and how you're

Going to respond and react you'll hear me in this episode talk about erwin mcmannis as if I haven't already interviewed him,

Because we talk a little bit about his book mind shift 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's important to the episode.

Left it in there because it really is gonna help you learn to remember that you're not always in a fight, my friend.

So let's get after it. Good morning, my friend. How are you today?

I hope that you are excited about a beautiful day.

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.

The theme of this podcast is going to 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

It's a common problem and 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.

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, 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 rest and think about something else and learn to get your

brain under control that this will become the defining thing of your life.

Friend, 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 want to give you

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,

Today we're going to unwind some of those ideas. We're going to talk about war. We're going to talk about fight

We're going to talk about the reason jesus came to the earth,

We're going to talk about what I call trauma mode and rest mode and how not to get worn out

It's just going to be a little short thought. I got two scriptures, maybe three

I might throw a bonus scripture in there for you. I'm just sitting here this morning

It's what is it five 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 going to 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 going to 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.

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.

Alright, let's get after it. So, on my desk right now, I've got a book called Mind Shift, from Erwin Raphael McManus.

Erwin McManus has written some really transformative books.

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 Mind Shift.

And it's, it doesn't take a genius to think like one, learn how to think differently,

you change your life, right? 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.

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.

The intention of this book is to destroy your internal limitations.

Friend, that's what we're gonna do in the podcast today.

So today, we're gonna get into that Erwin McManus idea I have an intention. I have an aim and a purpose today

I want to change your mind about something that I think will make a big difference in your life,

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 But as you know, I spent half of 2005 in the Iraq War in a tent hospital,

At a place called Balad airbase and back then they called it more to read a bill.

Because it was getting mortared or rocketed basically every day for the time period that I was there

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 PX 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 the threat was real of getting blown up or hurt and then on top of that we were taking care

trauma patients from car bombings and combat and roadside bombs every day.

And so while I was there, I did 200 operations, over 200 operations, and survived 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 24-7.

I mean, there are only two 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.

We had the entire staff to be able to run a critical care hospital.

They're with us, some Australians and Americans working together, and it was amazing.

But when you work in that environment where you're literally in peril or under stress

24-7 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 zero to a hundred exactly in that time and be ready to go.

Something happened when I got home that course I 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 six 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

I was alone. I was by myself It was pre Lisa 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,

senior older surgeon observed how I was behaving and.

Pulled me aside one day and said hey you got to slow down a little bit and I said what do you mean he said well

you're great surgeon that's that's clear it's plain 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 kind of 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. 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 had 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. 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. And it took me a while to understand that older surgeons advice, but here's what that means.

When we were 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.

And so if I'm in the middle of a case that's going to take me an hour or two and somebody

else only has 20 minutes, that guy's going to die if I don't get that case done.

So you develop this ability and Pete Lenderson and I, my partner who was in Iraq when I first

got there, he's now my good friend, I send patients to now in Colorado, he's a complex

spine surgeon in Denver.

And Pete and I, Pete kind of first told me like you've got to be able to get this case

done and have as much time as somebody else because somebody else might come in

and need you and you don't have time to be slow like you've got to get it out

and get done but you also have to be really good like you can't be slow and

you can't be bad you got to be fast and really good in order 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 didn't know

how to turn that switch back off. And so what would happen was we would do 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, let's clean this room,

Let's get after it and we would knock out seven or eight cases and be done at one 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

way, 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, 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 who'd been blown up,

but there wasn't a phone call.

It took me years, and Lisa, and counseling, and writing, and prayer, 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.

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?

Because let me tell you what Jesus said. Jesus said in John 10, 10,

two 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.

You can't have an abundant life while it's being stolen, killed, and destroyed.

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,

actually it's not a new book, it came out last year, but it's new to me,

called Rest and War by a pastor in Washington, D.C. named Ben Stewart. And I haven't completed

the book yet. I'm thinking I'm going to get him on the podcast at some point because it's 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, I understand what he

he means by this. There's a scripture in 1st John 3 8 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. The reason Jesus came was to destroy the devil's work.

That's 1st John 3 8. 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?

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 for Sean 3 8 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.

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 Hebb's 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 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 six 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? 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

It's because you're firing synapses that you may not even be aware of.

And it's time to biopsy them, sever those six 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.

You can't even see it.

Sever those six synapses and give these new neurons a better job to do.

And the better job is this, in 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.

Ask where the good way is, friend. 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 gotta jump up and get ready. 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 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.

And I'm gonna drink a cup of coffee here because 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.

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 would be calling

because you never call me. Something like that would be the first words 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

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.

I've been gauging those synapses that say I need to carry this perpetuate this battle that in my mind we need to have because we're in conflict and I've got this list of offenses 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 and the back and forth 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, I'm fine, what's going on, I miss you, I love you, I wish I could

see you, all those kinds of things.

Or it can be, boom, I'm going to slam this on you so that you feel this pain that you've

made me feel and we're going to combat now.

And you have a choice. this rest and war idea.

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,

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 need to rest and we need to say, you know what? 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. They can be helpful and healing for me.

That's the path friend this Jeremiah 6 16 idea 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

Remember do not forget what Jesus said about those of us who feel tired and burdened in Matthew 11 28

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.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. 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 PTSS 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 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,

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 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 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, there's some surgeons that make a big deal out of everything

and oh this is urgent, it's STAT, I've got to have this tested immediately, we've got

to go fast and it's usually not STAT, it's not an emergency.

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 vein

is torn open, and his mandible is 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 O.R. right now.

But I'm sorry if your patient has a gallbladder attack and they're sore and they're kind of sick

and they need to go in the next four or five hours, that's not stat, okay. 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 Dr. 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 five minutes this person's going to die. That's what

stat means to me. 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 Dr. Warren, you're gonna see

Damon turn into somebody different in the next few minutes because we are gonna push the gas pedal and we're gonna get this thing done because you need

your team to drill and train and remember that Chris Voss quote you don't rise to the occasion when the pressure's on you fall to your preparation and so

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

going to 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 and you too friend have a time when you need to go.

We have two 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 their brothers from the same litter Lewis was the biggest one Harvey was the runt.

Lewis is a 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 he just sits around a lot.

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 wade into it.

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 there, but he's not engaged. But 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 behavior, 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 kind of lean in.

And he's saying, Dad, I'm still alert.

I know there's a fight out there, but I need you to kind of love on me here.

He'll come and kind of 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 kind of sit there under the,

it reminds me of that passage, the rest in the shadow of God's wing.

Like he wants 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.

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.

He's still looking for the fight. He doesn't know how to switch easily back into rest mode.

So those two 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.

And so that's the problem with our lives. And 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. And friend, if this is resonating with you,

I just want you to remember today what 1 John 3, 8 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.

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.

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 sympathetic nervous system

says you need to be fighting still,

when the phone call comes and your offense and your synapses 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, 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.

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. It just means that something triggered a memory or a synapse and

And your job now is to reassign those neurons,

to sever the six 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, learn from me, and I will give you rest.

And there's a path, there's a way, there's a good way that you can walk in that doesn't involve you

having to fight 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.

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 could use the wood," Tom Waits said. Here's a song Elisa Turner sang.

Called my prayer for you. Listen to what she said. For anyone who's prayed a thousand 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,

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. 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 synapses 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.

But in between those moments, you've got to get into healing mode, to resting mode, to

recovery mode. You can't stay in fight mode all the time. You're going to wear yourself out, friend.

And I know this from personal experience.

I know it from a thousand nights when I couldn't sleep after the war.

I know it from a thousand nights when I couldn't sleep after Mitch died, that I was just ready for another.

Every time the phone rang, if Kalen wasn't home with us, every time the phone rang, I

I thought it was going to be the police telling me that something had happened to her.

For two years after we lost Mitch, I was terrified 24-7 that one of my other kids or grandkids were going to 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.

And for two 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 dose

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 and the branches are falling and the trees are swirling around

The only reason you can see those clouds is because the sun is still behind them

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've got to be ready to 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, 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.org.

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wlewarrenmd.com slash prayer, wlewarrenmd.com

slash 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 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.