The Kayak I Don't Love

I am a walking time bomb. My molar fillings are 50 years old. They will not last much longer. So every dentist visit I live in dread of the news that they will all need to be replaced. Nice as my dentist is as a human being, I hate visiting him. But yesterday, I dragged myself step by wretched step to his office for my cleaning appointment. I knew it was going to hurt...it always does. I have a couple of spots with receeding gums and I shoot through the roof when they try to scrape any tartar off those areas. I warn them, and they put the numbing gel on, but it only takes the edge off. It still hurts. And I feel bad that I react because the hygienist always is so apologetic. I wish pain were more easily contained.

I don't handle pain or really any stress well. Some people, like my son Anders barely notice when they are hurt. When he was a little boy, he once sliced his foot open to the point where it required ten stitches. He came toddling over to me and said, "Mommy, I think I might have hurt my foot."  Might have? I almost passed out just looking at it, let alone living it.

But as I tried to engage the hygienist in conversation to delay the inevitable, I found out she was a fellow Christian and her goal in life was to spread encouragement and joy. Despite the pain, I found myself glad that she was chattering away to me with her fingers in my mouth. As I left, shaky but alive, I wondered what it is about some people that they just glow with acceptance of me. Maybe it is just that she doesn't know me. Still, it is a quality I long to hold within myself. I don't know if one cultivates that kind of character, or if it just flows more easily out of some people. If I could buy it and pour it into my soul, I would. But I suspect it is one of those things you can't manufacture.

After the dentist appointment, we took our beloved friend Polly and her visiting three grandchildren kayaking. I brought all my kayaks, and assigned poor grandson Nicholas the kayak "I don't love."
I have a total of 6 kayaks, though 2 belong to Matt and his new wife. Two are hard shell kayaks that we put on top of the car at much expense to my vertebrae. The rest fit inside the car when deflated. 3 are the fantastic inflatable ones that are very well made and a joy to paddle, and one is the kayak I don't love. The kayak I don't love is actually a two person kayak and is really too small for any but the smallest of two people, but too big for any but the biggest of one people. Since Nicholas at age 16 was the biggest of us, he was given the kayak I don't love.
"Why don't you love it?"
"You'll see."

So the 6 of us set forth, like a gaggle of geese floating off on our kayaks. I had figured these kids would last maybe forty minutes. Two hours later, we had kayaked to a sandy shore and jumped off a dock, kayaked to two enormous rocks sticking up out of the middle of the lake and moored there, played like otters scampering and leaping from the rock, and kayaked back exchanging stories of lives that intersected just for a moment at this little point in time. Nicholas led the pack most of the way in the kayak I don't love.

They were delightful kids- friendly, smart, polite, and found joy in every part of our lake journey. They clearly loved and respected Grandma Polly, and her lovely face sparkled with the delight of these precious souls in her presence. I had one of the nicest afternoons I had had in a long time just being in the presence of people who appreciated simple pleasures of life, and of each other.

As I deflated the kayaks and rolled them up to pack them in the car, I carried the kayak I now loved with a little more respect.

Romans 15:7
 ⁷ Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.

While I have breath.....

I mean no disrespect to a necessary profession, but I hate going to the dentist. I have sensitive spots in my teeth that the dentist always seems to want to find, and dig around in with metal tools. You all know that electric shock that makes your nostril hairs singe and your eyebrows curl. If you don't, count yourself among the lucky few.

So I dutifully go twice a year but I look forward to it like I would walking on hot coals to reach a bowl of lima beans mixed with cow brains. Just yuck and double yuck.

Yesterday was my biannual visit to the masked purveyor of torture and pain in the name of health. (For all you children reading my blog, remember that I use exaggeration to make my points. Every one of you should go to the dentist faithfully, floss daily, and change your toothbrush every 3 months. Do not be dissuaded by my recounting of my own neuroses with dentists).

The dental hygienist is always impossibly cheery as she lays out the sharp, menacing tools. Before I even sit down, I remind her to swab my gums with the numbing gel. As it takes effect, my whole throat goes numb as well, and of course, now I am not only gripping the seat edge in anticipation of the inevitable shock of pain they always seem to inflict, but I am quite sure I will die of tracheal paralysis. And then of course, she asks  a question. Not just a yes or no question I can mutely nod or shake an answer to. A question that requires a dissertation to answer appropriately. But there I sit, mouth agape, tongue, throat and lips numb, with her fingers in my mouth and some hideous tool scraping away.

As she settled the apron that keeps the xrays from etching holes in my midsection, she told me, "What a beautiful day!" glancing at the sparkling sun outside the windows of the torture chamber.
"It is," I agreed, "It almost makes me feel like I am on vacation in this weather."
"Some of my clients tell me their favorite day of the year is a visit to the dentist," she went on.
My face must have conveyed the polite but obvious unspoken retort, "You are a big fat liar."
"Yep," she said, "They are usually young mothers with 3 kids under age 5. They say the trip to the dentist is the only time they have an hour of uninterupted peace and quiet."

I pondered that thought for the rest of the visit, which only had one brief moment of tolerable pain. I guess, like in all things, it is a matter of perspective. To a starving child, moldy bread is a blessing. The Bible tells us, in one of my favorite verses, "A live dog is better than a dead lion." (Ecclesiastes 9:4)  I suppose the simplest way to think of it is count your blessings.  I had no cavities, I left with nice clean teeth, and a new yellow toothbrush with bristles that tell me when it is time to get a new brush. The sun was still shining, and my dear daughter greeted me with a smile, hard at work on finishing her school work when I returned.

While I have breath, I should really be using it to praise God for how fortunate I am to have breath to praise Him.... and sweet smelling breath, courtesy of the dentist I so fear.

Ecclesiastes 9: 4-5
⁴ Anyone who is among the living has hope -even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!  ⁵ For the living know that they will die,
       but the dead know nothing;
       they have no further reward,
       and even the memory of them is forgotten.

1 Peter 1: 3-4
 ³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you,