When Sorrows Like Sea Billows Roll*

“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus,” said Charlie Brown. “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”

Charlie Brown is not alone in his lack of holiday cheer. A 2022 Sesame medical marketplace survey revealed 40% of 500 adults polled admitted to higher levels of stress, anxiety, or depression during the holiday season. Christians are not exempt from “holiday blues,” especially when individuals or families experience recent or ongoing traumas or tragedies. Sickness, death, divorce, and finances top the never-ending list of human struggles, and the holidays often compound the hopelessness of these hardships.

The doctor as the patient

In his latest book, Hope Is the First Dose, Dr. W. Lee Warren, a prominent neurosurgeon and podcast host, agreed that it seems impossible to navigate the holidays with a heart of gratitude and worship when personal pain and suffering dominate a believer’s focus.

No stranger to suffering, Warren and his wife Lisa, both dedicated Christians, lost their 19-year-old son Mitch in 2013. With one phone call, their world was upended by what he came to call “the massive thing, or TMT.”

In a recent interview with The Stand, Warren shared how TMT, Mitch’s death, reconfigured every part of their daily lives, including holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. In fact, all of life’s celebratory milestones served as glaring reminders to the Warrens of who was not with them and what would never be.

Warren also discussed the ongoing inclination of those suffering hardships to focus solely on their debilitating pain and loss – perhaps even more so during the holidays.

“Early on,” Warren revealed, “we were often tempted to say, ‘We had a great life, but our son died. We had an amazing family, but … We had this, but that happened.’ Then we realized every time we did that, we were making a choice to allow the furnace of suffering to consume us rather than refine us.”

Broken but not destroyed

Granted, the Warrens had not chosen the furnace of suffering, but they were suffering. The question was: Would they let the massive thing of Mitch’s death become the massive thing of their entire lives?

Their answer was guided by the juxtaposition of two verses they knew to be infallible truths. In John 16, Jesus plainly told His disciples that in this world, they would have trouble. But in John 10, Jesus also promised that He came to this world to provide believers with abundant lives.

The Warrens purposed to not allow the fiery pain of suffering to consume them. Instead, they chose to take God’s declaration in Isaiah 48:10 personally and allow Him to refine them right there in the furnace of their suffering.

They chose to live in the ands of life rather than the buts. This pivotal change of focus helped bend their hearts toward gratitude. Warren recommends that same choice as wise counsel for anyone traversing grief during the holidays.

“The holidays are another one of those times,” Warren remarked, “when we can say that this is about me, my loss, and my pain, or we can take this suffering that we have and somehow put it on the altar, on the cross, and allow Him to make it part of this beautiful ‘and’ that our lives are becoming.”

But Warren advises those recently experiencing bereavement to not be hard on themselves during this initial holiday season.

“I think holidays are a natural time of connection,” Warren added, “and when there’s somebody missing, it’s a fresh laceration of that wound … especially when you go through it that first time.”

Developing a treatment plan

Warren began studying other people navigating tough times, including family, friends, and even patients. Some of them seemed unshaken by TMTs – almost untouchable; others crashed and never recovered from their pain; and still others fell hard, but slowly and surely climbed out of their pits of despair. And most had dips – times of deep sorrow followed by times of moving forward and upward from their troubles.

These observations helped Warren articulate a practical plan of scriptural hope to move forward beyond his grief.

“I came up with this concept of what I call a treatment plan. … In my practice, I write prescriptions and perform surgeries, so it came naturally to me to put it in terms like that. The treatment plan is what you do to your brain before you have massive things [happen] or in between your massive things.”

Covered fully in his book, it’s a scriptural plan of “prehab, self-brain surgery, and rehab.” Though seemingly daunting, it’s simply a way to examine traumatized, grief-filled thought patterns and remove harmful thoughts that do not line up with God’s Word, replacing them with hope-filled, scriptural truth. Regardless of the type or timing of TMTs, the prognosis is filled with hope for those who follow the treatment plan God offers within His Word, and Warren’s optimism has been proven over time.

This three-step treatment plan is not a one-and-done procedure, nor is it a stop-gap measure to dull the pain momentarily. Instead, it’s a continual process of aligning and realigning our thoughts (and subsequent actions) with the truth of the Bible.

A promise of recovery

Warren recalled how God had promised Abraham to make his offspring as numerous as the stars in the heavens and the sand on the seashores. But there was a huge gap of time between the declaration of God’s promise and the impossible birth of Isaac to his elderly parents, Abraham and Sarah.

“[But] even without evidence, without proof,” said Warren, “Abraham just decided to believe it.”

So just as there was a lonely, aching gap between God’s promise and its fulfillment for Abraham, there is still a gaping darkness between what has been lost and what God promises to restore to those suffering and mourning this holiday season.

Like Abraham, the Warrens discovered that God’s promised gift of restoration lies smack-dab in the middle of that gap. And hope is the difference between those who move forward past that gap to God’s promises – versus those who never do.

Warren offered no empty platitudes or quick fixes to close the gap and move forward. But he did advise a daily treatment plan: Open God’s Word and align all thoughts with His thoughts.

For God promised that in this world, Christians will have trouble, but they can also experience the abundance of life in Christ. Bridging the gap between these two scriptural truths begins with hope. 

(Digital Editor's Note: This article was published first in the December 2023 print edition of The Stand).

* Headline is taken from "It Is Well With My Soul," a well-known hymn written by Horatio Spafford in 1876