I’d worked so hard to get my universe in order like a pregnant woman whose nesting instinct has run amok—a pregnant woman prepping for the apocalypse. But I was neither pregnant nor preparing for the end of the world. I was just getting ready to have knee surgery.
I had jumped through all the pre-surgery hoops—appointments, scans, tests, and even a joint replacement class (yes, that’s a thing)—and had tediously rearranged my calendar to make room for this medical misery. But then, BAM!—it all got derailed by a stupid toothache.
It’s a fulltime job to have a body as fickle as mine, and my job satisfaction is currently at an all-time low. I’ve tried just about everything short of voodoo and leeches to fix what has broken over the years, but I keep learning that many of my issues, including my current orthopedic woes, are hereditary. Why, oh why, couldn’t I just inherit cash or bounteous shares of Apple stock?
I was definitely psyched up for this knee surgery, even if it did signal my official arrival in Oldsville. Knee pain was making it hard for me to do all kinds of things that that tether me to sanity – exercise, golf, romping with my grandkids, hiking through the woods – so I was very ready to get it fixed.
But in mile 25 of this 26-mile knee-pain marathon, I was yanked off course by a silly abscessed tooth. Less than a week before my scheduled surgery date, my dentist confirmed that the roots of my throbbing molar were infected and the tooth would have to come out.
I was properly horrified because I am quite the diligent brusher and flosser. I thought only oral hygiene slackers and meth heads had to have teeth pulled. Thankfully, the tooth was located well behind the boundary of my smile and I’ll be getting an implant to fill the space, but it still felt creepy to part with it.
And the extraction itself was seriously no fun. That tooth dug in its heels and fought back valiantly. In fact, it’s now two weeks out and thanks to some complications, I’m still having a hard time enjoying two of my favorite things: talking and eating.
My knee surgery is postponed for weeks, my plan is blown to pieces, my face hurts, and I’m pretty bummed about it all. And yet, I must acknowledge there are good lessons to be learned here.
I’ve lived long enough to know that misery comes in many flavors: planned, unplanned, orthopedic, dental, physical, emotional, and maybe thousands more. But so does grace. For every misery, there is corresponding, surpassing grace available from God to help us endure it. Grace for the planned and unplanned. Dental grace, orthopedic grace, pain grace, waiting grace, and thousands more, all given by a God who is never caught off guard by our trials or indifferent to them. He even promises to ultimately use them all for good in the lives of those who are His followers (Romans 8:28).
To angrily shut God out in hard times and forfeit the grace He offers may be tempting, but it’s foolish.
I realize it would be way more spiritual to quote the Bible at this point, but I recently read a biography of Winston Churchill and two of his quotes seem strangely appropriate here.
The first: “Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.”
Everything about God’s sovereignty in this dental debacle has been too complicated for me to figure out, so I stopped trying. My part is to simply trust that God is good, He loves me, and He has a plan.
The second Churchill quote: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
And with that I’ll close … and simply keep going.