As I sat in the chair at the oral surgeon's (code word for hard core dentist), I was grateful for the "anti-anxiety" pill that he had prescribed for me. It literally took me from a level of nervousness that had me considering canceling the appointment one minute to a nonchalant ambivalence the next. And really, when you know you're having a piece of your body ripped violently out while awake, ambivalence is the best you can hope for. SO, back to the chair. I could have just had the numbing shots, or the laughing gas for $80, or the I.V. stuff that "puts you in a drunken state" for an extra $200 (not covered by insurance). And really, if I wanted to be in a drunken state, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten myself there for much less than $200, though at 11 a.m. it might have proved a challenge. I opted for the gas, though, because I wanted to know as little about what was going on as possible. As I settled in the chair and they placed the mask on me, I literally felt all my cares float away. Even when they gave me a couple of rounds of shots, and I knew that my body was hurting and that I couldn't feel it, I just didn't care. I was conscious, but not concerned. And even in the midst of all the gas and pain medicine and Valium and numbing, I thought to myself, "This is how people can do the most horrible things, or allow the most horrible things to be done to them." I know, that is pretty deep for a dentist chair. But it opened my eyes to a world that I have little experience with. It showed me how prostitutes and abusers and addicts and broken people survive the continued damaging things through drug addictions. It took me about 3 minutes to not care if the dentist ripped out every tooth in my head, imagine what months or years on drugs would allow and abused girl-turned-prostitute to endure, without "caring." It was really an eye-opening experience (except for the part where I couldn't actually open my left eye for an hour or so because the shots "turned off my blinking muscle"). And a weird experience. Who thinks about these things in the dentist chair? Really? But as the hours have passed and my foggy brain has come back to its normal level of somewhat coherent thought....it occurs to me that this was actually an answer to prayer. In all of our relationship restoring and life rebuilding, Jimmy and I have been praying for wisdom. Not any specific kind of wisdom, but just that the wisdom of God would become more evident in our lives. That we would be able to see things with the light of the One who knows everything shining in our minds. I guess that today, God thought I needed to understand a bit more personally how people use drugs to hide pain. I don't know why, or how this wisdom will be used, but I thank God for the few minutes of teaching in the most unlikely of places.
What kind of wisdom are you seeking?
