War Stories #4: The Long Path to a Confusing War

Part of a series of posts from my time at war, to show the reality of the wars we all fight and how Self-Brain Surgery™ can help you come home

How did I get here?

In 1991 I was a college student, striving to achieve my lifelong dream of being a doctor. I had been accepted to multiple programs- Houston, Galveston, San Antonio, the University of Oklahoma (OU), and was waitlisted at Dallas, Vanderbilt, and Stanford. Now that I knew for sure that I was going to go to medical school somewhere, I cancelled interviews at the rest of the places I’d applied (I was so insecure in those days that I applied basically everywhere, hoping simply to get in anywhere), and I notified the three schools that had me on their waitlists that they could move on to another applicant.

It was settled: I would be a doctor, and I would go to school either at Oklahoma or one of the Texas schools.

Now, I had to figure out how to pay for it. Since I lived in Oklahoma, the in-state tuition was appealing, and it was a great school. I made the decision to stay in Oklahoma, and politely declined the other offers. A relative told me about a scholarship from the air force that was available- full tuition and books for four years in exchange for four years of active duty as payback.

Since the United States hadn’t been to war since Vietnam, it sounded safe and fun, so I applied. A few weeks later, I had a letter offering me a commission as a second lieutenant, and an appointment to take an oath and become an officer.

On the evening of February 24, 1991, I raised my right hand and swore to defend the USA against all enemies foreign and domestic. When I said, “So help me God,” the master sergeant and a few onlookers congratulated me, and then someone pointed at the television on the wall behind us and said, “Look at that!”

We turned around as CNN was announcing that the US army had invaded Iraq to begin Operation Desert Storm.

I’d just become an officer in the air force of a nation at war.

As you know, that war didn’t last long. I went to school at OU, decided to become a neurosurgeon, moved to Pittsburgh and trained for six years, graduated, and was assigned to do my four years of active duty payback in San Antonio. All those years, we’d been at peace as a nation, but I was fighting a war at home (see my book No Place to Hide* to read the full story).

I arrived at Wilford Hall Air Force Medical Center in San Antonio on August 1, 2001. 42 days later, terrorists flew planes into the buildings and killed thousands of people. 9/11 put us back into war, and suddenly I was an officer in a hospital that would soon start sending expeditionary medical hospitals to support the fight.

Some generals in the Pentagon decided to use the army to supply neurosurgeons to the war first, so it seemed for a while that I might not be chosen. But four years later, when I was only six months away from the end of my active duty payback, I received orders and found myself in Iraq. You can read what that felt like, and some lessons that may help you in your wars, in my previous War Stories post, and on the first War Stories episode of my podcast.

Two ways we wind up in a war

I wrote all that history to tell you that for many of us, we don’t just wake up one day and find ourselves at war. We can often look back and see a decision we made somewhere along the way in our lives that started us down the path to where we are.

Cancer infusion rooms are full of chemotherapy patients, and some of them remember their first cigarette. Jail cells sometimes cause people to reflect on a decision to drive that led to the flashing lights and a DUI. Divorce courts prompt reflection on the history of a relationship, and a decision to go on that first date. Bankruptcy settlements happen after a long string of financial decisions gone astray. And I was in Iraq scrubbed into brain surgery in a tent hospital during a mortar attack because of that evening in 1991 when I’d found what seemed to be a safe way to pay for medical school.

Some of the horribly injured patients I cared for there were like me- they had joined the military to pay for school or looking for an exciting career. And because they joined up voluntarily, they knew there was at least a possibility they could wind up as a casualty of war in a field hospital. The enemy combatants and insurgents we treated also knew they had a high possibility of being wounded or killed, so when they woke up in my ICU, they weren’t surprised to be there.

Others, though, were completely unaware that war was coming to them. The Iraqi children caught in crossfire or blown up by terrorist IED’s planted in their toys. The civilians injured while waiting in line to vote in Iraq’s national elections. The young woman whose home was firebombed in retaliation for her husband working for us as an interpreter. These folks did not sign up for war, or expect to meet an American neurosurgeon in their lives, but here they were.

I’m telling you this because, no matter how you wound up at war, you’re going to need some self-brain surgery to make it out alive.

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Ruminating on how you got here won’t help you while you’re here

One of the inevitable things that happens when you find yourself at war is that your thoughts get out of control. Whether it’s your first rocket attack, the first time a sniper shoots at you while you’re walking down the sidewalk in Baghdad (yes, that happened to me), or the hundredth time you look in the mirror in the morning after you did that thing again that you promised yourself you’d NEVER do again, you’re going to start hearing the voice.

You know the one, because it sounds like you: “Why did you volunteer for this, you idiot? You’re going to die.” Or, “I knew it. You’re such a quitter. You’ll never get clean because you’re too weak.”

Here’s what you need to know: Beating yourself up for being here won’t help you deal with being here. It’s too late to wonder why or wish you’d made a different decision.

And if the war you’re fighting truly came out of nowhere- the rare cancer that’s you’re fighting that has no known cause, the freak accident that’s landed you in chronic pain, the sudden loss of a loved one that’s plunged you into the depths of grief- spending your mental and emotional energy on wondering why this has happened or trying to find someone or something to blame will not help you in the coming fight.

It’s not time for an autopsy of your life’s decisions, or to demand that God or anyone else give you an explanation of why this has happened. If you want to survive, and especially if you want to find a path forward to find hope and flourishing again, it’s time to perform self-brain surgery to develop a plan for what to do now.

Remember the ninth commandment of self-brain surgery: I must remember that what I’m doing, I’m getting better at.

Your brain will wire in whatever you tell it to focus on, and begin immediately to work towards helping you feel and remember things related to it. So, if you want to make sure you stay stuck and feel worse, then ruminating on those impossible to answer “Why?” questions will do the trick. But if you want to become healthier, feel better, and be happier, you’ve got to tell your brain that it’s time to get in the fight you’re actually in now, because getting better is better than blaming or brokenness or bitterness.

So, no matter how you got here, you ARE here, and survival requires your presence and attention to the war you’re actually in.

And the war you are in has its own set of problems, starting with the fact that it’s very confusing.

War is a jumbled up mess

Scrubbing into surgery wearing a 9mm handgun in a shoulder holster

I remember scrubbing into surgery while wearing a 9mm pistol in a shoulder holster, prepared to save a life OR to take one should the hospital be attacked.

I remember operating in the sterile environment where everyone is in scrubs and gowns, only to have a colonel in his dusty desert camo and boots burst in to, “Check on my guy you’re taking care of.”

Colonel observing surgery, NOT dressed for the operating room

You’ll feel confused as well:

Maybe your war is addiction. You find yourself sitting in a rehab facility with a nurse checking your vitals while your mind still craves the thing that’s been killing you.

Maybe it’s grief. One day you’re making funeral arrangements for the person you thought you’d grow old with, and the next day people are telling you it’s time to “move on” when you’re not even sure how to keep breathing.

Maybe it’s a marriage that’s disintegrating. You’re bouncing between lawyers’ offices and therapists, one minute trying to fight for it, the next wondering if it was doomed from the start.

War is confusing because it feels like two conflicting realities exist at the same time. You know you need to move forward, but part of you is still stuck asking How did I get here? or How do I even start fixing this?

But if you want to make it out of your battle alive—if you want to have a chance at healing, growth, or even joy again—then you’ve got to accept the reality of the fight you’re actually in, not the one you wish you were in.

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Three Steps to Start Fighting the Right War

No matter how you got here, you are here. And that means it’s time to focus on fighting well.

1. Accept that you can’t change the past, but you can change your next decision.
   The moment you stop replaying how you got here is the moment you reclaim your power to decide what happens next. Start small. The next choice you make—what you put in your body, what words you say, what thought you choose to believe—will either pull you deeper into the fight or push you toward victory.

2. Identify the war you're actually fighting.
   Are you fighting to heal, or just trying to punish yourself for how you got here? Are you fighting to get better, or are you stuck trying to make sense of something that will never make sense? You can’t win a war you don’t even understand. Take a step back and ask: What battle am I truly in?

3. Take action toward healing today—no matter how small.
   Wars aren’t won in a day. But they are won through consistent movement forward. Don’t wait for your feelings to change before you take action. Do something today that moves you toward health, healing, or hope—even if it’s just choosing to believe that healing is possible.

This is Your Battle—Now Fight It

You may not have chosen this war. You may not understand why it’s happening. But the truth is, you are here, and you do have a say in how this story plays out.

So stop asking why. Stop giving your energy to things you can’t change.

Instead, get in the fight. Train your brain to focus on what is possible. Start practicing self-brain surgery, because you’re getting better at whatever you’re doing.

And winning this war is better than staying stuck in it.

Action Steps:

✅ Biopsy your thoughts. Here’s my free Thought Biopsy Worksheet that will help you.

✅ Take control of your mind. Start practicing Self-Brain Surgery™—the neuroscience-based, faith-driven method to change your thinking and change your life. This letter and my podcast every week are powerful tools to help you. And paid subscribers get weekly bonus videos and other resources.

✅ Dive deeper. If this concept resonates with you, I told the whole story of this bombing and the first time I had to make the triage decision between two badly injured men in Chapter 7 of my book, No Place to Hide*.

💡 What battles are you facing today? Hit reply and let me know how you’re learning to stay in the fight. I’d love to hear from you.

Lisa and I are praying for you. Thanks for reading this letter from an old triage doctor. 😀

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

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 will help you harness the transforming power the Bible promises in Romans 12.

And the good news is, you can start today.

Be sure to check out the archive of previous posts if you missed last week’s letter.

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