Even After Everything
New podcast!
Hello my friend.
This time of year can be difficult if you’ve been through some sort of trauma or tragedy, the massive things that make us struggle to believe that in a year our troubles will be out of sight.
If that’s you, then today’s episode of The Self-Brain Surgery with Dr. Lee Warren Podcast will help.
Join me for a beautiful conversation with Stephanie Duncan Smith, author and book editor (and her Substack letter is packed with great help for writers). Stephanie’s story is powerful and moving, and the way she ties the pains we face in life to the Christian calendar is incredibly helpful.
Stephanie’s book is Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway.
About Even After Everything (from the publisher):
Exquisitely told and urgently resonant, Even After Everything is a love letter to anyone who has opened their heart only to be hurt. Stephanie Duncan Smith proposes that it’s not through grit or forced resilience that you will find a way forward, but through receiving the full spectrum of our lives, just as we receive the empathy of God-with-us in every moment.
Duncan Smith’s disorientation began when she lost her first pregnancy on the winter solstice, just as the world readied to celebrate its most historic birth on Christmas. Then a new yet uncertain pregnancy unfolded parallel to the pandemic, until nearly one year to the day of her loss, she gave birth to her daughter at the peak of mortality in their city. These contradictions compelled Duncan Smith into a desperate search for steadiness, which she found in the liturgical year as a grounding force and the promise that we are seen by God in every season.
In Even After Everything, Duncan Smith traverses the church’s circle of time and reorients herself and us in the sacred story told through Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, and Ordinary Time. She reveals the sacred year—through its endless interplay of love, loss, risk, and resurrection—as a mirror to the human experience, an anchor for turbulent times, and a womb strong enough to encompass every human care. At its heart lives the promise of God-with-us, inviting us into the spiritual practice of taking courage in the trust that we are accompanied in everything, and love will always have the last word.
Be sure to check out this week’s self-brain surgery letter if you missed it. It’s packed with tools you can use to change your mind and change your life, and there’s a helpful goal-setting guide you can use to get 2025 off to a great start!
Share this message with someone who needs encouragement this holiday season, and let’s spread the joy and wonder of Christmas together.
We’re going all in on believing that we have the tools to change our minds and change our lives. Living from a mind-down perspective changes everything, and it helps us harness the transforming changes to our lives that the Bible promises in Romans 12.
And the good news is, you can start today.
If you need a treatment plan to help you overcome any kind of trauma, tragedy, or massive thing in your life, check out my latest book, Hope Is the First Dose. And if you’re looking for something else to read, here’s a list of some of the best books I read this year*.
Lisa and I are praying for you.
Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope),
Lee
Psalm 71:14 ("As for me, I will always have hope.")
From the banks of the North Platte river on Moon River Ranch in Nebraska, USA
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This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Adapt Naturals.
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*This is an Amazon affiliate link. If you purchase a book from this link, we will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you
Yes that's correct and we are receiving emails there about the book. You can send your request to lee@drleewarren.com as well. Thanks!
Dear Dr. Warren, I have been trying to win a book and everytime I try to enter the email you give for that, it kicks back a message saying that it is an invalid email. This is the email I am using: Contact@drleewarren.com Am I entering the wrong email? Thank you and Merry Christmas to you and yours!