Open your abused mouth and say, "AAAAAH!"

Earlier this week, I visited the dentist for the first time in 12 or 15 years. I say "or" because I honestly don't remember when or where my last dental visit took place. But I remember why I've been avoiding any kind of dental exam.

I had bucked teeth when I was a kid, so I wore braces when I was ages 9-13. The reason why my orthodontic treatment lasted so long was because I sabotaged it. When I was a kid, I lied constantly. I hated my braces. They made my teeth sore, poked into my gums, and kept me from eating many foods that I liked. (Or they'd keep bits of foods that I liked on display for all to see.) When no one was looking, I'd find a mirror, get an ink pen, and undo one or more of the tie wires on my braces. One time, I successfully removed the entire wire that spanned across my entire top row of teeth. When people would ask me what happened to the wires, I would tell them that the wires just fell off. I know now why I would lie, but I don't know why nobody confronted me with my lying. (And I don't know why nobody noticed that there were more serious issues underneath that lying little girl who didn't want her little mouth to be repaired.)

An orthodontist named Dr. Letmeyell Atyou (not his real name) was in charge of most of my treatment. In retrospect, I don't understand what the heck he was thinking when he decorated his office. In general, people who wear braces are not advised to eat foods that will get stuck in their braces. Popcorn is food that should be avoided and could possibly break a bracket. So, Dr. Letmeyell Atyou had a popcorn machine at the front of his office, and his receptionist would give me a bag of popcorn before I would leave each visit. Um, does anybody else besides me see anything wrong with this?

After the braces finally came off, I was required to wear retainers. Perhaps you can guess how faithfully I adhered to that treatment. (I think I ended up breaking one of the retainers.) So, my bottom row of teeth became crooked again. I went back to Dr. Letmeyell Atyou's office, where he finally lived up to his name. After he reapplied braces to my bottom teeth, he barked at me that if I messed up my teeth again, he wouldn't fix them. Dang. Maybe I should have just kept my bucked teeth.

Fast-forward to 23 years later, and all it took was one morning of me feeling food get smushed up into my gum where a tooth should have been, and I called a dentist to make an appointment. This time, I chose a nice doctor in a posh suburb on purpose. The decorations in this doctor's office made more sense to me. I don't usually like sports, but I liked how I got to watch part of a soccer game with closed captions during my tooth exam. Technology made this visit pleasant, too. I got X-ray results in seconds. Sure enough, I have a hole in my tooth, and I need to get it repaired with a crown.

The dental personnel looked at my teeth X-rays and told me that my roots were very long. She said that I had probably never worn braces. But I replied that I had, and I told her an extremely short version of the story that you just read. I also found out that my tooth decay has not reached the tooth's nerve, so that's why I hadn't been feeling any pain there. That's a good thing.

Wait. After all that blood, sweat, tears, and years of metal in my mouth, a trained dental professional can't even tell that I had worn braces?

I will now distract you with some comic relief by showing you a picture of my cat trying to take a nap in my clothes hamper -- a forbidden realm for felines in my home. Heh, heh. Now I'm not the only one in this blog entry who broke rules.

"He who is full loathes honey, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet." (Proverbs 27:7)

I will now talk about a very serious topic. I've learned that growing up in an abusive environment can mean growing up with a distorted view of love. It can be extremely difficult to leave your abusive environment because you have affection for your abusers. But someone who grows up in an abusive environment may not know how to give or receive love without abusing or being abused. Perhaps the abuse is mixed in with the love, or the abuse is mixed in with what is claimed to be love. I think the verse in Proverbs that I quoted above illustrates this a bit. If you're starved for love, and you can't tell the difference between love and abuse, perhaps you'll gulp down the abuse and think that you're gulping down love. Or perhaps you'll even develop a craving for abuse, because it's all you've known. How are you to know the difference between bitter and sweet if all you've ever been fed is bitter, and you're told that it's sweet?

Jesus can show you the difference, if you'll let Him. He's the Sweetest One you'll ever meet. Maybe I'm sounding a little cheesy, but a woman who's in love with the Fairest of Ten Thousand (I'm talking about Jesus -- see Song of Solomon 5:10) is going to sound a little cheesy sometimes.

Jesus is the One who makes the crooked places straight and the rough places smooth. He restores what's been lost. He heals what's been broken. And He probably won't yell at abuse victims and threaten to stop treatment while He's healing them.

"A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out." (Isaiah 42:3)

"Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever." (Psalm 125:1, NKJV)

"He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers." (Psalm 1:3)

I've also learned that if you grow up in an abusive environment, especially if you don't realize that it's abusive, the abuse could become so familiar to you that you become comfortable with it. After you leave your abusive environment, you could even reproduce it because it's all you know. Where you're planted -- where you settle and let your roots grow -- is extremely important. If you're planted deeply in the abusive environment, it could be extremely difficult to uproot yourself and replant yourself in a safe environment. But if you're planted deeply in God, He'll nurture and protect you. If you trust Him, all kinds of troubles and trials could get hurled at you, and you won't be moved.

It would be as if your mouth had braces trauma as a child, and when your mouth is examined as an adult, a trained eye can't spot the past trauma right away because of how deep the roots have gone. Perhaps the pain isn't smarting as it should yet because the decay hasn't reached the nerve yet. But it's OK, because you're in a safe place where the problem can be repaired, before the damage worsens or spreads, and you know that you're in good hands.

I didn't put a disclaimer at the beginning of this blog post. I hope that's OK. I also hope that I didn't say or imply anything offensive, and I hope I didn't hurt anybody's feelings, honest. I'm trying to sort through life, make sense of my past, and hopefully in the process help other people who have gone through similar experiences. I wasn't sure at first how deep I would go with this post. Heh, heh. Truth has a funny way of sneaking up on you sooner or later.