Yay.
We simply went to get our family’s teeth cleaned. Only to find out that Angela needed oral surgery. Yay.
On the positive note, they were able to schedule her for surgery the very next day. So we drove the two hours home, and she went back the next morning for one of life’s more memorable experiences.
Anesthesia
On another positive note, the surgeon was really good at what he does. He numbed her mouth both inside and out. He worked his dental magic, and the surgery was successful.
As he was finishing up by suturing where he had done his work, Angela saw him pulling the cat-gut (or titanium fishing line, or whatever they use nowadays) up and out of her mouth. For some reason, from her vantage point… laying in that amazing chair, head tilted back and at an angle, light shining from up above… it looked like the surgeon was stitching up the roof of her mouth.
She thought to herself, “Wow! This really must have been worse than he thought. He’s having to stitch up an area that I didn’t know was even affected.” She couldn’t wait for him to finish so that she could run her tongue across the roof of her mouth to feel how far over he had to stitch.
Sure enough, he finished his suturing, sat her up and let her know that everything was finished and fine. Once she could close her mouth and manage it without being obvious, she lightly ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth.
But to her surprise, no stitches. It was as reasonably smooth as usual. And that was odd because she would have promised you that he had stitched in an unexpected area.
Perspective
The truth was, it was all a matter of perspective. From where she sat, and with her somewhat limited knowledge of dental surgery (though she may beg to differ with my estimation, wink), it appeared to her the surgeon was doing something which he wasn’t doing at all. In the end, she simply had to trust that… even if he was stitching someplace in her mouth which she didn’t expect… he knew what he was doing better than she did.
Sound familiar? We all go through difficult situations in life… situations God allows for some reason, but through which He goes with us and guides us.
And while He is working all things together for our goood (Romans 8), it can sometimes appear to us that He is working on something that isn’t even related. Or worse yet, that He isn’t working at all.
It’s in those moments we need to trust God as the ultimate spiritual Surgeon. His vantage point is better than ours. His knowledge base far exceeds ours. His experience supersedes ours dramatically.
His job is to do what He does in the right way, even if it doesn’t look right to us. Since He is kind enough to have us under some anesthesia to knock down some of the pain, rather than second-guess Him, our job is to sit back, relax and let Him work. In the end, we’ll be able to see that His work was as perfect as He is.
I don’t know what brought you to His office and set you in His chair today, but I can tell you that I’ve been to Him before… He’s gentle… He won’t hurt you… And in the end you’ll be glad you let Him work on your life… regardless of what His suturing looks like while you’re under the anesthesia.
Just trust Him.
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