Smilin'

Over the past month or so I have had to get some major mouth work done. It has been, painful, time consuming, and extremely expensive. I have been fighting to keep a good perspective and to continue to entrust this whole situation to the Lord.

One of the things that keeps running through my mind is a picture of a woman that I met in a rural village in India. It took so long to drive out there and it was in the middle of nowhere. When our team arrived at this village the people ran to us. This particular woman stood in the back and just smiled (the universal language). I could barely look at her smile though. He teeth were so mangled and bloody it just looked so painful! I remember thinking then, how does this woman live with this pain?? It is there all the time, it can keep you from eating and talking- how miserable!! This woman popped into my head the day that my dentist told me that I was going to have to get a root canal and a crown and that this is a very involved process. This woman had no hope int his world of ever being relieved from this pain, forget the fact that she probably would never be able to afford it, she would never even have access to a dentist. This really made me so grateful for this opportunity to have this pain taken away by a professional who does this all the time. This realization makes me sad as well. There is no way that I deserve to have this opportunity over this woman. I don't know why God would see fit to provide this opportunity to me and not this woman, it doesn't make sense but I do know that with this opportunity He has entrusted responsibility to me because of this opportunity.

This procedure involves them drilling my decayed tooth, putting on a temporary tooth, cutting my gums and performing surgery to put in an implant for a crown, allowing my gums to recover for 6 weeks, and then finally putting on my crown. I have just finished the surgery. I am in pain and feel very restricted in my mouth movements. This made me think (once again) about how I take for granted even the ability to communicate by talking but also by smiling to people. I literally can not smile at people right now because of my stitches. It is also very taxing to talk too, I just sit like a lump on the log. I think (or at least I hope!) that when I am healed from this I will rejoice in the fact that I can communicate with people and enjoy the freedom of talking again!!

One other thing that I will do after this is all done- I WILL BRUSH MY TEETH AND FLOSS AND GO TO THE DENTIST EVERY 6 MONTHS and I encourage you to do this too! I do not want any of my friends to go through any of this!!!!!!