Grace Sufficient for Toothache

A totally unrelated picture of some goats.

“Did the dentist put a golf ball in your mouth?!” - my friend responded to seeing my face. It’s the latest stage of my tooth saga - a hamster-like right cheek, as some kind of mass of puss and blood and who-knows-what builds up around an infection.

When the toothache began I optimistically hoped it might just die down again. It didn’t, and I realised the tooth that was hurting was the one I’d had root canal treatment on in England about a year ago. I remembered my dentist saying that, whilst he felt a good job had been done, he couldn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t flare up again sometime… I also remember thinking, “I hope it doesn't in the Gambia.”

As always seems to happen, the weekend was approaching as the pain was increasing. A phone call home on Friday evening was met with urges to get it looked at as soon as possible. But I knew that the next day was the monthly National Cleaning Day - the last Saturday of every month - when everyone has to clean their compound. Public services like dentists or transport wouldn’t be available. So I’d have to wait until Monday, which felt a long way away.

Treatment time...

It was the first of several sleepless nights, as the painkillers wore off and I waited in pain for the clock to crawl on to when I could take more. Then in the morning I heard Mama on the phone giving my name to someone and arranging an appointment. She felt so concerned that she went ahead and phoned a friend who knew the wife of a decent dentist. Though he doesn’t normally work on Saturdays he agreed to see me, and was able to do so because the cleaning day had been cancelled!

After a quick prod around, the dentist explained that he’d have to essentially undo and redo the root canal treatment - sometimes an infection can still flare up underneath the good work that’s been done, and it needs to be reached and dealt with. I thanked him and trusted him, and I thanked and trusted God whose hands I was in. I just had to trust that the tools were all good and clean.

My least favourite part is always the anaesthetic injection. But it was over before long and my mouth duly grew numb. Then began operation Dislodge-Crown and Remove-Filling. I’d opted for what was meant to be the strongest and most durable type of crown - gold - placing one of my most valuable possessions in my mouth. Not for much longer! But being such a smooth and strong metal, it turns out it’s not terribly easy to remove it from the tooth that it’s crowning. A prolonged assault on it with various techniques ensued - some kind of big metal pumping lever, some kind of burning instrument, leaving the strange taste of burning metal in my mouth, and lots of banging and drilling. Finally, “twunk” - off it came. It lodged in the back of my throat and I was about to swallow it! The dentist calmly said, “Don’t swallow. Cough.” Phew! Gold (albeit singed round the edge) recovered.

Then began the real work. The tooth in question is the penultimate molar on the bottom right. Those fellas go pretty deep. And the filling went all the way down, into all three roots. It took a lot of drilling through the metal filling to clear it out, with shards of the stuff spraying over my mouth and down my throat. Yummy. No assistant on hand with that suction thing. I think it was around this time that the dentist confessed, “This would be a lot easier if I hadn’t forgotten my glasses”. Oh. I wasn’t in much of a position to respond beyond, “Huh”, and to keep praying.

Eventually he reached the bottom and injected some kind of medicine, which hit a nerve and made my legs fly up into the air in pain. Why that won out over the anaesthetic I don’t know. It all felt like a long and pretty brutal operation. I tried to take my mind of it by singing in my head words to some of my favourite songs, which lifted my spirit to truths far bigger and more important and more joyous and eternal: “In Christ alone my hope is found; he is my light, my strength, my song. This cornerstone, this solid ground, firm through the fiercest drought and storm…” I got through all 4 verses of that, all 3 verses of Before the Throne of God Above and all 4 verses of I Stand Amazed in the Presence.

It was an hour and a half after the appointment began when I walked out. I was relieved that it was over; hoping that the treatment would be successful; thankful for the dentist’s kindness, seeing me on his day off; humbled by the awareness that many people here wouldn’t be able to afford treatment. Naively forgetting that the anaesthetic would wear off before long, I went along to the Bible school class I was meant to be teaching soon after. I just about stumbled through it, as my mouth gradually came to terms with what had just happened, and made the class as interactive as I possibly could, to minimise time speaking and take attention off me.

Since then I’ve been living on painkillers, waiting for the body to heal itself, and latterly watching this swelling develop, which the dentist is keeping an eye on.

— 

Grace Sufficient

All of that is not exactly unique. It’s a common problem, and common treatment. So why would I blog about it? Partly the distance between me and friends back home just makes me long to fill (ba-dum, tssh) people in. More than that though, I want to testify to this being an example of God’s good hand at work even in what has been very painful and unpleasant. How so?

The physical pain after the operation was very severe, some of the worst I’ve felt, as my mouth adjusted to the pretty brutal trauma it had received in the dentist's chair. Painkillers that had to last 6 hours would wear off after 3, leading to an infuriating and prolonged limbo experience of wanting to do something to distract me from the pain, but being unable to concentrate on anything sufficiently.

But the physical pain was confounded by the emotional pain of grieving the weakness and fragility of my body, being not wholly sure of the quality of the treatment, and all far away from home, just wishing I could have family or friends around to lend a sympathetic ear and give me a hug.

As I said though, I see God’s good hand in it all. I’ve just today remembered that soon before the toothache kicked in I was reading an excellent book about John Newton (famous for writing Amazing Grace), in which I read and highlighted this:

Trials remedy fictional escapism. Trials are the onrush of stinging realism crashing the idealised party we call “life”. When these serious trials interrupt our lives we “run simply and immediately to our all-sufficient Friend, feel our dependence, and cry in good earnest for help”. But when all is well, when life seems peaceful and prosperous, and when the difficulties in life are small then “we are too apt secretly to lean to our own wisdom and strength, as if in such slight matters we could make shift without him.” We lose out on communion with Christ.

Tony Reinke, Newton on the Christian Life, p.82 (quotes are Newton) 

Times like these force me to “run simply and immediately to” Christ. And that is so good for me because he is the only “all-sufficient Friend” and the only ever reliable and faithful source of comfort, love and strength. It reminds me that I can’t even “make shift without him”. Furthermore his grace and strength and power are displayed in and through me all the more brightly and clearly when I am most conscious of my weakness and most “feel [my] dependence”.

You don’t have to read the Bible for long before you clearly see the folly of the dangerously misleading yet ever popular “Health, Wealth and Prosperity” message, which poses as the Christian gospel in many churches here, and around the world. The apostle Paul wrote:

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

2 Corinthians 1:8-9 

Not exactly health, wealth and prosperity. Not exactly “your best life now”. Every single New Testament writer clearly communicates that there will be trials, battles and hardships as we follow Jesus in this fallen world. But the child of God can know with confidence that all such things come under the sovereign control and loving wisdom of our Father. And God uses them so that we will learn that he truly is reliable - he absolutely and uniquely can be relied upon, even ultimately to raise us from death. Trials develop perseverance which leads to maturity (James 1), this perseverance produces character and hope (Romans 5), trials prove the genuineness of our faith resulting in praise to Jesus (1 Peter 1), and they aren’t even worth comparing with our future glory (Romans 8).

So trials are to be expected. But God is at work for our good through them. And since God wants to grow and mature his children, we can trust that he uses these trials to prepare us to trust him, rely on him and glorify him in greater trials ahead. I don’t expect this to be the last or the most severe trial that I face!

So like Paul in his pain…

I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10 

It’s only a tooth; many suffer much more. 

Who knows what future trials lie in store? 

May you and I learn, in whatever we face, 

That in Christ alone is sufficient grace.