As Fun as a Root Canal

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Margaret

Recently I drove to the Chicago area to visit my regular dentist. Actually there’s nothing regular about him, since he’s a specialist in root canals. Normal mouths don’t have a “regular” root canal man, and I’m not proud to say this procedure was my sixth.

Admittedly, the process is less of an ordeal than it used to be in the ‘70’s with those pin-like screws being hand-turned into the nerve and then yanked out again and again. Today’s specialist labored behind magnifying goggles and worked on my tooth with power tools through the eye of a microscope.

After 90 minutes of having had my mouth open, I was finally standing at the front desk with the doctor. “Here are two packets of quadruple strength ibuprofen. Take one right now. Also, I’m giving you a prescription for Vicodin, should you need it. And because we found so much infection, you’ll have to take antibiotics for a while.” He shook my hand and told me to have a nice afternoon.

I thought about my poor, battered tooth. A back molar, it had faithfully done its job without complaint until a couple of months ago when a dull ache started calling for my attention. When I didn’t respond, the ache grew worse and swelling started in the gums, along with occasional sharp pangs. While I was still thinking I hadn’t flossed well enough, an abscess had taken hold. And today the raw truth came out.

Nothing stays hidden forever. God says he’ll bring everything into the open one day, all of our secrets. Nothing escapes his notice, and eventually he’ll prove it to us by showing us (and others) what’s been going on “in the dark.” How goofy to think we could ever pull the wool over God’s eyes or sneak under his radar.

Just recently I learned a friend’s husband had taken up with a woman at his office. He’d kept the relationship under wraps until recently when, against his will, the truth came out, breaking my friend’s heart and destroying their marriage. He thought he could live with one foot in each world, keeping secrets from both women.

To live uprightly when no one’s watching is God’s challenge for all of us every day. Just as he saw my abscess hiding deep in my jaw in its early stages, he sees every choice we make and each action we take, even “in the dark.” For some, the consequences of revealed secrets may be so severe, they’ll long for the simplicity of 90 minutes with the root canal doctor.

“Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, ‘Who sees us? Who will know’?” (Isaiah 29:15)

Lookin’ Good!

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Margaret

This afternoon Mary and I talked about the ravages of time on our old faces and the magic of plastic surgery. Not that we’d do it, even though the mirror says we should. (It’s easier just to avoid the mirror.) But this afternoon we participated in a face lift of a different sort. The two of us put fresh upholstery on eight dining room chairs, a simple way to “lift” a room.

To be successful required the right tools. Factory-tightened screws can be difficult to loosen, and succeeding assumes you’ve got the right screwdriver. You also need a staple gun, a tool that doubles as a weapon of mass destruction. Keeping a hammer handy is good for staples that don’t go all the way in, and a pliers is effective in yanking out the hopeless ones. A box of Band-Aids isn’t a bad idea, either.

Doing something new is never easy, and trudging up the learning curve usually includes a measure of slip-backs: our chair corners ended up with too many folds; staples went in loosey-goosey and needed to be yanked out and redone; stray fabric peeked out from the chair frame, another re-do; one staple-shot grazed my finger and drew blood. But each chair we did got a bit easier and ended up looking nicer than the one before.

Isn’t that the way with life? When something new comes to us, particularly something we don’t want, we look for ways to step away from it. When we finally accept it, it’s usually not as bad as we anticipated. Practice may not make perfect, but working hard to learn something brings improvement.

God often asks us to do new things we don’t want to do, like love unlovable people, suffer intense pain, surrender a spouse or a child, care for someone who doesn’t appreciate it, or wait “forever” to see our prayers answered. But we can get better at handling each of God’s assignments by simply cooperating with his tutoring since he’s the great Supplier of know-how. As we tackle what he sends, little by little we work out the kinks.

Of course God’s “chores” are far more complicated than fixing up old chairs, but Mary and I learned a few things as we went along. When we started out, our confusion, misuse of tools and lack of knowledge caused us to lose 45 minutes on the first chair. As we went along, there were set-backs and failures, but each cushion taught us better ways to do the same job. The last chair took only six minutes, start to finish. Gathered around the dining room table, our 22 year old chairs don’t show their age at all.

Now, if only Mary and I could use our improved stapling skills to give each other face lifts.

Jesus said, “Blessed are all who hear the word of God and put it into practice.” (Luke 11:28)

Coming Up Short

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Margaret

Until recently at my house we were still working with an ancient fuse box and glass screw-in fuses. Since we had circuit-breakers at our last house, moving to the cottage brought an electrical learning curve. At first I couldn’t tell if a fuse was blown or good, and it was a guessing game trying to link their power with certain areas of the house. Gradually, though, the fuse box and I became friends… until last summer.

My electric water heater would work fine for a couple of weeks, then go cold. I’d replace a couple of fuses, and it would work again until a few weeks later. One day while at the hardware store buying more fuses, I described this to the clerk. “Are you using the right number?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “two of them.”

“No, I mean the number on the fuse. They have different strengths. Check your fuse box. Sometimes it says.”

And sure enough, I’d been using 20’s in two holes needing 30’s, shorting on power to the water heater. After I corrected my error, all was well. If only life’s other shortages were as easy to repair: shortages of sleep, money, patience, energy, wisdom, all kinds of things.

Each of us has felt pinched in specific ways from time to time. For example, every new parent knows about sleep shortages and later learns about patience shortages when their children test them.

Nate and I had financial shortages for many years. Families in other countries find themselves short of food or medicine. People in jobs that require creativity find themselves short of ideas, and those needing physical strength in their work become short of energy.

But the worst is when we feel shorted by God, that he hasn’t come through like he said he would. We claim his promise to provide for our needs and wonder why we’re short on cash. We put him first, believing he’ll direct us, then wonder why we’re unemployed.

I’ve found it helpful not to look at the current-day shortage but rather at past provision. It’s the manna principle. God told the hungry Israelites to collect only enough for “today.” If they gathered extra, it rotted.

That’s often how we define our shortages: “I made it through today but I need to know I’ll have enough for tomorrow.”

If we apply the manna principle, we’ll focus on the first half of that sentence rather than the last. Worrying about stockpiling “extra” is wasted effort.

I remember when a grandchild asked me for some juice. She usually only drank half, so I filled her cup accordingly. As I gave it to her, she cried out, “No! All the way full!”

Thinking she must be very thirsty, I filled it to the top and handed it to her. She said, “Thank you,” and skipped off to play. Later I found her cup. She’d drunk only half.