The Toothache – Pain of the Problem and the Pain of the Solution

Over the past several months I have been plagued with a constant toothache. I finally took myself kicking and screaming to the dentist. He discovered I had a crack in my back upper right molar. The dentist glued the tooth together by filling in the crack with some kind of cement. He said we’d have to give the tooth some time before putting on a crown to see if the root of the tooth had been damaged. The pain went away for a little while. I was very grateful. No one likes the prognosis “root canal.” This was a procedure I surely hoped to avoid! Maybe the problem could just be patched over and covered up with a crown.

I was instructed to use extreme care and completely avoid using that quadrant of my mouth, so I chewed all my food on the left side, even being careful with soft foods and liquids. Within a few weeks the pain returned. With fear and trepidation I went back to the dentist. He placed a temporary crown on the tooth, took impressions for a permanent crown and sent me home with an antibiotic and instructions to follow in case I began to experience extreme pain. “What’s this all about?” I thought.

Apparently the dentist knew more about the future than I did. Within a very few hours I was in excruciating pain. Apparently all the fuss over my tooth had awakened a sleeping giant. The only pain I can even compare it to is labor and childbirth. Still I resisted. I was in the middle of a very busy week. So much to do, and I still hung to the hope that somehow miraculously the pain might simply go away without any more expense and inconvenience. After 48 hours of agony I called the specialist. Suddenly no amount of money was too great and no procedure too uncomfortable if only this pain could be taken away.

By the time I actually found myself in the chair of the endodontist, mouth open, staring humbly into the bright overhead light, much of the pain had subsided. I braced myself as he moved toward my pitiful tooth with his icy probe checking each tooth for sensitivity.

“That’s the one,” he said. “You definitely need a root canal.”

With tears leaking out of my eyes and toward my ears I expressed my terror at the thought of further suffering.

“Actually,” he said, “The greatest part of the pain occurred before you came to me for help.” He explained that infection had settled in and destroyed the nerve of my tooth. The pain I had experienced was actually the pain of the nerve dying. According to the doctor, the root canal, the stabilizing of the tooth and getting rid of any infection was going to be far less painful than what I had already gone through. I chose to believe him. I was out of alternatives, and he was right. The procedure I had fearfully procrastinated for months was not what I had imagined and the outcome was RELIEF!

In 12 Step recovery there’s a saying that goes: “People come for help when the pain of the problem is worse than the pain of the solution.” Many of us (and I include myself in this diagnosis) are initially overcome with fear as we read the 12 Steps of Recovery. I remember thinking, “Well, I’ll take the first three steps and the last three, but I’m not taking any of those steps in the middle.” I’m sure my response is not unique. We imagine that taking the steps will be very painful. But, when the pain of living in the insanity of our problem becomes worse than the imagined pain of seeking a mighty, divinely implemented change in our lives, we find the humility to seek help and surrender to a process that is tried and true. We become as willing “as the dying can be,” it says in AA literature (AA Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 24).

That day in the dentist chair the endodontist spoke words that calmed my heart. “Actually, the greatest part of the pain occurred before you came to me for help.” Those words caused me to relax and surrender to the work that had to be done that day. Today I want to share those same words with any of you who are avoiding recovery because you’re terrified of the pain of taking each of the steps. The application of the 12 Steps, though daunting at first, is actually much less painful than we fear or than the pain we have experienced in the throes of our problem. The greatest pain is experienced before we give up and surrender to our need for help.

Through these steps, like young Alma, we can experience relief we never imagined possible. In the Book of Mormon, Alma the Younger describes what happened to him when he was finally humble enough to cry out to the Lord. “Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death. And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more. And oh, what joy and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!” (Alma 36:18-20).

Root canal or recovery–when we surrender to the process, it brings an end to an exhausting pain-filled journey. I don’t know the etymology of the word “endodontist,” but I notice that the first syllable is the little word “end.” Part of the job description of that specialist is to bring an end to dental misery. It’s curious that the Lord calls himself “The Beginning and The End.” Do not be afraid of these 12 simple gospel principles. There is One who has paid the price to specialize in any and all hurts you have experienced in this life. Through Him we can each experience “The End” of pain brought on by the infection of our sins, the sins of others, or the trials and afflictions of earth life and “The Beginning” of a joyful new way of living.

By Nannette W.
Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Copyright 2008 by Nannette W. All rights reserved. Making or sending copies is permitted if the page is not changed in any way and the material is not used for profit. This notice must be included on each copy made or sent.

“I Don’t Want Jesus to Come and Visit Me!” Step 11 - Personal Revelation

Some time ago Ethan (then age 6) experienced some very real spiritual feelings one morning as he was reading the children’s version of the Book of Mormon. That evening Ethan lay snuggled in his bed thinking about Joseph Smith’s experience. He pondered how it was that the Prophet Joseph, while just a boy, received a visit from Heavenly Father and Jesus. Suddenly out of the darkness this little guy with some newly discovered spiritual feelings and curiosity about such things called out to his mom. It was not the standard, “Can I have a drink,” call, but “Mom, do you think that if I read the whole Bible that Jesus would come and visit me too?”

Eliza, his older sister and a real practical gal answered from the room next door in just the way you would expect from a serious minded first child. Her simple response was an emphatic, “NO!”

His little brother Carson rested quietly on the bottom bunk bed right below his very imaginative, very courageous, “excited about the scriptures and things of the Spirit” older brother. I’m sure he was trying to process just what the ramifications were of his brother’s apparent desire to have a Joseph Smith experience. Suddenly it dawned on him that he was sharing a room with this seeker of revelation. After a few minutes of silence Carson little voice rang out in the darkness, “Well, I don’t want Jesus to come and visit me!”

I think there must be something of Carson in me, and maybe in all of us, when it comes to things not commonly seen with the eye, things connected with the very real world of the Spirit. Sometimes I feel afraid like Carson, or unworthy, or lazy, or unprepared for the responsibility such interactions seem to command. Though I’m fascinated by the promised gifts of visions and personal revelation, when it comes right down to it I sometimes prefer that Divine interaction remain just outside my personal space, be it hearth or heart.

Things haven’t changed too much with Carson. Last week he lost his first tooth. After this developmental event, when all the kids were tucked into bed, I visited with my daughter on the phone. We had a good laugh when she told me, “Carson’s tooth is not under his pillow. It’s on the front porch. He says he doesn’t like the idea of the Tooth Fairy coming into his room.” We like the idea of fairies and such as long as they stay on the front porch.

Now I hope you don’t think that I’m somehow comparing communication with the Lord with a visit from the Tooth Fairy. I’m not. What I am saying is that sometimes I’m like Carson. I want the prize, but I don’t want to pay the price in closeness.

Joseph Smith taught, “God hath not revealed any thing to Joseph, but what he will make know unto the Twelve and even the least Saint may know all things as fast as he is able to bear them.”(Ehat and Cook, ed. The Words of Joseph Smith, p. 4; emphasis added).

We become “able to bear” the wondrous possibility of daily interaction with our Father and our Savior through the Spirit as we live for it and then practice it. We must become willing to open the front door of our homes and our hearts and invite them to come in. When we ask, “What would Jesus do?” it is very different than inviting Him in from the porch and saying, “Lord, what would Thou have me to do?” Wondering what it would be like to have Jesus with me all day long and trying hard to adjust my behavior to such a possibility is very different than really believing He is with me at all times.

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me keeping God at any distance for any reason will not do in these trying times. Sure I am tempted to feel embarrassed that I’m not all that He would want to be yet. But someday Carson and I have to climb up the ladder to the top bunk with Ethan and entertain the idea that God might just talk to us too. I need to know I’m loved and I need daily counsel and power, things I’ll never be able to receive from the front porch.

By Nannette W.
Posted Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Copyright 2008 by Nannette W. All rights reserved. Making or sending copies is permitted if the page is not changed in any way and the material is not used for profit. This notice must be included on each copy made or sent.