#547. Wishing being a Christian meant a pain free life.
May 27th by JonWhen dentists look in my mouth, they see ski boats and luxury sedans and the chance to finally take that month long tour with their family in Italy. I have what in the periodontal community is known as a “lottery month.” I’ve got fillings to be replaced, cavities from having braces three different times and a gold mine of potential wisdom teeth to remove.
And the day before I spoke at the Off the Blogs event in February, I even had an emergency root canal.
It started at four in the morning. Waves of pain began rocking me every forty minutes. The right side of my face would turn grey, one eye would go red and I would enter a small space in my head where my dying tooth would scream, “There is no pain in this dojo!” But there was pain in that dojo, oh there was. I went to work and tried to tough it out. I scheduled an appointment with a root canal specialist and then set my stop watch to 24 hours because that’s how long I had to make it.
By the time my appointment rolled around, I wanted to hug the dentist I was so happy to be there. I was moments away from freedom, I was on the edge of relief and I was ecstatic.
But it didn’t quite go the way I thought it would.
At minute 90 during the procedure I was still in agonizing pain. Apparently I have roller coaster roots that flip and turn inside my teeth. So the dentist couldn’t use just an electric tool to kill them. Instead he had to also use hand tools and slowly twist his way with some sort of long thin file into my teeth. Imagine someone spinning a titanium needle between their thumb and pointer finger back and forth deep inside your tooth for an hour and a half.
So I asked for more novacaine. Based on the pain I was in, I figured the dentist would say, “Sure, hook up this camelback hydration system and drink it through a straw. Have all you want.” Instead, he said:
“I can’t give you anymore. I’ve already reached the limit of what you can handle. If I give you anymore, your vision will blur.”
My first thought was, “For how long? I’m not reading a book right now. I’ll get a cab to take me home. Are you saying my vision will blur forever or just for a few days? I promise, I don’t need perfect vision for the rest of this week. Give me the novacaine.”
But he wouldn’t and so I sat there with increasing flows of electricity shooting through the nerve highway of my mouth. I thought I had reached the worst point until I felt a hygienist place something in my hand. “Did that really just happen?” I thought to myself? “Did a hygienist just place a ball in my hand to squeeze because it’s about to get even worse? What century am I in? I’m not getting a Pancho Villa bullet removed on a battlefied right now. A ball? Seriously? Is there not a strap of leather I can bite down on too? Just go ahead and give me a shot of bourbon while you’re at it and heat up an iron to cauterize the wound.”
The whole experience was extremely difficult, but within 24 hours after leaving the dentist’s office I felt better. I started to feel good again and realized that I was glad he hadn’t potentially risked my long term eyesight for the instant relief of my very temporary pain. I’d like to say that was the only time in my life I’ve willingly wanted to trade long term consequences for short term gains, but then that would be a lie.
I think God can rattle off 2 billion times when I’ve made the same request to Him. When something in my life has been painful and I’ve tried to find a shortcut out of it. When I couldn’t understand His long term plan for my life and said, “This is too much. Hit me with some God novacaine. I don’t care what kind of lesson you’re teaching me in this. I don’t care about refining. It hurts, let’s get this over with.”
I don’t think I’m the only one that’s done this and I wonder sometimes if that was what Joseph felt like when he got freed from the well. He must have been terrified when his brothers threw him down into that cistern in the desert. He must have thought he was dead, that he was in an inescapable pit. But then, for a brief moment he might have felt like freedom had arrived. His brothers were returning for him, they were lifting him out. He was free. He was rescued.
But in the blink of an eye, his pain went to a different place and he was sold into slavery.
Sometimes, the hardest moments in life are not the initial painful experiences we go through, but the times we think it’s over and it’s not. When we think we’ve escaped an illness but it returns. The times we finally got a job after being unemployed for a year but get laid off in the first month at our new one. The times we think we’ve reconciled with our husbands but things fall apart again.
I don’t know what’s going on in your life. Maybe things are great right now and you’re thinking “oh jeez Serious Wednesday.” That’s awesome that things are good right now, God certainly showers us with greatness. But maybe you just went from a great job to a no job kind of situation. Maybe you’re crying out for novacaine right now. I don’t know your specifics, but what I do know is that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
It’s not in some things, or in most things or in the things that make sense in the moment. It’s all things. And for the ones that hurt, for the moments that don’t make any sense whatsoever, we’re given a great reassurance in Romans 8:26.
“We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”
I love that.
I love that when we don’t have the right words or the perfect words, the Spirit groans for us. That’s the prayer I pray during life’s root canal moments. I just ask the Spirit to “groan.” It’s not the most elaborate prayer. It’s not that fancy, and it would make perhaps the world’s shortest book. But when I’m in a corner and don’t know what to pray for because the pain doesn’t seem to line up with my plans, that’s all I say to the Holy Spirit. That’s my simple prayer request.
“Groan.”
Comments
Oh, man. I’ve run this hamster wheel so many times, even though I know it doesn’t go anywhere. I’ve actually even asked to be allowed to do things even if they aren’t good for me. (Thankfully God is too good of a father to give in to the “but this box of matches will make me HAPPY” argument.)
I think that it is also important for us to come to grips with the fact that sometimes, not always, but sometimes we bring the pain on ourselves. I feel that if I had followed God earlier in my life, then I wouldn’t have had to deal with the pain that resulted from my disobedience. If I had humbled myself in the way that He requires of me, my wife would not have been hurt by my prideful behavior in the first year of our marriage. And the relationship that I helped destroy would have grown, not crumbled. And the sorrow that came with having a broken marriage could have been avoided, but that sorrow was what God used to draw me closer to Him. And I am very thankful for that.
Thanks for this… I always feel like the most authentic prayers are the ones where I say the least (and the Holy Spirit groans the most)
. Which seems strange to me until I actually write it down, and then it makes perfect sense. I think it’s so important for us to remember that it’s ok to not have all the right words– even (especially?) when we are praying.
From someone whose had two root canals in the last two months and… we’ll just say some family drama that keeps coming back like the Energizer Bunny… Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. God used you to write that for me today.
P.S. As a sidenote, I actually did hit the jackpot and discover the Mary Poppins of endodontists. She is upbeat and perky and it is all microscopes and computers and in and out in less than an hour for a root canal. Oh, and a thousand dollars. But from what you just described, so totally worth it! http://www.endoorlando.com
you’re totally right and some of us seem to have such times for years on end. it seems like my husband and i have been stretching for a long, long time. and we’re also those “just starting to get good after several really bad jobs, now no job and no way to pay our bills” folks. if this is what we have to do to get to our purpose…it’s difficult for me to say that, almost like a little spiritual throw up…ah well
Oct. 1983 – August 1988: Jan – August 2005: not enough novacaine in the world…
God does hear our groans and He does walk with you in the valley, sometimes close enough to feel His arms wrapped around you; His tears mingled with yours…
I needed to read this today more than even I knew. For the last few months my life has been that repetitive pain of something that comes back and hurts. You are right in that pain comes back and it can be recurring. Once I saw you quoted Romans 8:28…I knew this was God speaking to me. Thank you so much for being able to put this into words for everyone who reads it. That is a gift and a blessing for all of us.
This is a post I will come back to again and again. I might just print it out and carry it around in my wallet. Thanks for doing what you do best. Spread the word. You’re really very good at it.
Groan! I might need to add that to my SCL set of catch phrases. Razzle dazzle was getting a bit hammered…
This post really lifted my gloomy mood. I don’t know how. But I’m grateful
I’m sure satan wants us to feel discontented and abandoned in the times when the pain is really obvious and difficult, or prolonged beyond our expectations.
But when I think about it, I don’t think there are any golden, pain-free times. Even the happiest of my experiences have been tinged with sadness. Even if just the wistful knowledge that all good things must come to an end.
thank you. I read this post sitting in the ICU listening to my grandfather’s respirator breathe for him, while my mother ponders her future with cancer and I want to be back in the idyllic world of thesis writing. All I have done in groan because I no longer have words with which to ask for anything. thank you for reminding me it is not ‘me’ groaning but the holy spirit groaning for me.
love this post. thank you for the wonderful reminder of who God is and what the Holy Spirit is doing.
That was so good. I really needed that right now; I’m going through some things where I need the Holy Spirit to groan for me.
This seems to be a lesson God is trying to get through to me recently, since I’ve been seeing it everywhere. Your post really helped me see that. Thank you.
Oh, that’s only too appropriate as I just went to the Root Canal Man today. (just an eval) He said my tooth was going to die and there would be pain, but I’d have to wait until that happened before they could do anything. So yay! Pain! In my future!
I too have a mouth that looks like “gold” to the dentists. Sigh.
Whoah! I felt like I was at the dentist with you! It was written so detailed and painful…yet relevant. Glad I found a new blog to stalk
I was on the verge of a complete ‘I need to go home and forget this Gods call thing’ melt down last nigh and i felt prompted to open this site up and wola! God spoke. Thank-you for being an advocate of His word and not being afraid to mix a little serious in here every now and then
i’m feeling totally sympathetic towards your root canal…mine took 2 1/2 hours. my roots don’t just rollercoaster, they wrapped around my jaw and ended somewhere near texas apparently. the little hand tools were killing me. thankfully, my endodontist cared nothing for whether or not i’d have blurred vision, and shot me up until i was floating on clouds and playing harps with the angels i was seeing. glorious.
thanks so much for this. The past few years, I’ve just avoided “the dentist’s office” completely, because I’m afraid of what kind of pain will be waiting for me if I follow His plan…this obviously isn’t healthy at all, and I’m working on it.
I also got a good laugh out of “So I asked for more novacaine. Based on the pain I was in, I figured the dentist would say, “Sure, hook up this camelback hydration system and drink it through a straw. Have all you want.”
If only.
And don’t forget this gem:
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Hi Jon, thank you so much for this post. I didn’t read it until today but I really needed to hear it because I’m going through a tough spiritual struggle, the pain and shame of being humbled again before God, and want to cry out for some spiritual novocaine. But like you reminded me, God works for the good of those who love Him and even in times like these, I need to trust that He loves me enough to discipline me like a father and crush the pride that can cause so much damage. Spiritual life isn’t pain-free but I can trust that God has a good purpose for everything.
I’ve been struggling with chronic knee pain for five years (when you’re nineteen, that’s a long time). Just recently, the flare ups have been awful (as in, icing my knees for an hour before I can even hobble down the stairs), and I’ve been struggling with the whys and accepting the fact that I can’t change that I have the pain (doctors are helping, but it’s a slow road). But, with some other “coincidences” and this post, God’s pretty much hitting me in the head with this point. The fact that He does have a use for this pain. My feeble mind just can’t “get it” yet.
That was ramble-y, but the point is thank you for writing a very timely post.
OH my! I can totally relate to the root canal thing. I was supposed to be getting a filling, but it turned into a root canal as the dentist started drilling and blood came out! My roots were all twisted upwards in the tooth too. However, I was given plenty of Novocaine…so much I thought my heart was gonna race right out of my chest. I feel the pain man, I feel the pain.
Temitiv: adj. describing things that require “teams.” ie. “Soccer is a temitiv sport.”
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That was bad to read, now that my (actual) novacaine is wearing off. The thought that there's a tip of a tool stuck in my canal isn't helping either. (apparently our root canals our twins because mine are all swirvy too, and that's why the tip broke inside when the Doc was working)
I love that Quote about the Holy Spirit interceding on our behalf. Is it Andrew Murray? If you've never read his stuff, YOU. MUST. One of my favorite books by a theologian is "Humility", which Murray wrote when he was a missionary in South Africa (I think…don't quote me). It's the smallest, thinnest book, but definitely worth every scrawny page.
P.S. I've had 5 root canals done in the past, and of those 5, two had to be redone recently. I've had three wisdom teeth pulled out and two molars that were so bad they couldn't be saved, hence, taken out. I promise I still have teeth left that I can use to chew my food. You'd never know my mouth is in that bad of shape just by looking at my front teeth, which are considered "perfection" (Dentist's word not mine). It's as if I'm a phony. My back teeth need Jesus.