Peace that Surpasses All Understanding
The dental infection that brought me closer to God
Just in case I thought that returning to God was finally going to make everything perfect, and heal me of all my problems, I was quickly reminded that that is not how it works. It’s not how any of this works.
This isn’t the same as the new age, which promises that if we can just get our thinking right, and our spiritual life right, then every problem will melt away. We will manifest perfection and bliss. That’s not the deal. That’s not the path of surrender and carrying your cross.
A theme I’ve noticed in the past year and a half of belief, is that I’ll pray for a miracle healing — and, so far, the miracle healing doesn’t happen. At least not the way I’m hoping it does. But, God shows up anyway. And paves a way forward. And comforts me in the process.
Back at the start of my Jesus situation, in fall 2022, I simultaneously realized that I had dental infection that I thought had already healed. But now it was back. It was recurrent… Or, even more likely, it had never gone away in the first place. And the problem was bigger, and harder to fix, than I thought.
Over a year before, while replacing the crown of my dental implant, my dentist got cement stuck way up in my gums. We didn’t know, until the tooth and gum inflammation never went down. It was uncomfortable chewing on it for a long time, and I thought something was probably wrong. Finally he x-rayed it and saw the cement. Great.
He tried to remove the cement with some sort of fancy laser waterpik thing that vibrated my entire face, and instead of getting the cement out, all it did was give me a sinus infection by vibrating my entire face and sinus so unnaturally. I had to go back for him to try to get it out a second time, this time manually trying to scrape it out. He thought he got it all. But… fast forward over a year? He did not.
It was on a back tooth, so it wasn’t easy for me to see the state of my gums, and most of the discomfort had gone away over time, so, thinking it was fixed, I was able to ignore it for over a year.
But eventually I realized, oh no no no no no. It’s still infected, isn’t it? It was starting to be painful again, and now I couldn’t ignore it. I also started getting extreme histamine and allergic reactions to foods I’d never been sensitive to before, and seemingly, reactions to life in general. My gut and digestion had also been very off since I took the antibiotics for the sinus infection a year before, and now my immune system was pushed to the max, and it was sounding the alarm bells in the form of excess histamine, and itching, and hives, tingling and neuropathy, and brain fog, and adrenaline rushes.
My body couldn’t handle the infection load it was carrying anymore.
The dentist who messed this up in the first place, took another x-ray and said, “Mmmm, I’m so sorry but… it looks like there is still some cement up there. And now I see some upper jaw bone loss around this infection, which worries me. I think I should replace the crown with a different type that won’t require cement.” But I was at my wit’s end with him, and really didn’t want another big procedure, so I made an appointment with another dentist to get a second opinion. And in the meanwhile… I prayed for a miracle.
It was time for God to step up. I had JUST started my Jesus situation that very month. And I thought… alright God, show me what you got (not sure that’s the right approach but, I was telling God I trusted he could perform miracles.)
Oh God…. Please please please. I know that this probably needs a physical intervention but pleeeaaasssse. You can do anything. You can heal anything! You can perform miracles. PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE heal this without me having to get more traumatic dental work. Please.
I prayed incessantly. I hoped that my new faith that God COULD …not that he would… but that he could… heal me miraculously, might be enough. After all! He had seemingly performed an even bigger miracle in my youth! He miraculously placed a tooth in my gums! (You can read about that in Tired as F*ck) He can heal a silly little infection!?!? OF COURSE he can. HE CAN DO ANYTHING. HE IS THE CREATOR. Plus, just the other day I’d read for the first time, Jesus healing a woman’s long suffering health problem. Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering. Ok GOD! LORD! Whatever you want me to call you! I have faith that you can heal me! Let me be freed from my suffering! And yes, I have a million other health problems that I still want you to heal too, but this dental infection takes the priority right now. If you are willing, I know you can heal me, said the leper. I had biblical references to show to God: God look, you said it! You said it! I’m reading the Bible now! Come on!
I also thought that maybe, just maybe, God could give me a lil’ miracle, so I could use it when I finally broke the news to people that I was a psycho Christian now.
I will use it to … glorify you, God! I will use it to lead others to you! I’ll be able to say, Look, I know I’m a psycho Christian now, but… I mean, God miraculously healed my incurable dental infection, and then he healed all of my other problems too! Our God is a very good God!
So I prayed. I prayed and prayed and prayed.
Finally I had my second opinion appointment. She looked at my x-rays, and poked around in my gums, and firmly said to me: “Hmmmmm. This is really bad. There is a lot of bone loss and a huge pocket you could never keep clean if you tried, it’s too far up. So, I really think you should get this entire implant surgically removed from your bone, then get a bone graft to replace the bone, let that heal, and then you can get another surgery to put another implant in the place in your jaw where the bone has regrown. Also… these titanium implants are often very corroded when we take them out. That could be affecting your health too. You can replace it with a newer zirconium implant, which is way more biocompatible and doesn’t corrode.”
My head was spinning. I lost my hearing for a second as the blood rushed from my head. She was telling me I needed at least three major surgeries. One to remove the titanium implant that was screwed into my jaw, then a bone graft, then another surgery to screw another implant into my jaw. No.
No no no no.
I nearly had the wind knocked out of me. And as I sat there listening to her in the dental chair, my eyes flooded with tears. My head kept spinning. No I can’t. I can’t. I have had too many dental surgeries in my life, I cannot go through this again. I can’t. Plus my body is already so overburdened, and so reactive, that if I keep giving it physical traumas like this, I am never ever going to heal. I am never ever ever going to get above water. I can’t do this. Not to mention the cost of multiple out of pocket surgeries like this. Not to also mention, that I had three more titanium implants that now were apparently corroding in my jaw bones and maybe were the cause of many of my health problems, since I was a teenager when I got thhem? Was my body dealing with a constant barrage of titanium heavy metal? That was three surgeries per implant. 12 surgeries. Again, the cost of which I couldn’t even begin to think about.
I’d been praying so much the past few weeks, that I instinctively started praying again. God please help. Please please help me. How am I going to bear this.
And in a moment, I felt peace. Deep, supernatural peace. A peace that surpasses all understanding. Because this was objectively horrible news. And this was a traumatic …re-traumatizing of the panic and overwhelm I felt in high school, burdened by teeth surgeries. And the fear I felt a few years ago when I learned how much dental work affects your overall health, especially if you have metal or festering low-grade infections in your mouth. But after a few seconds panic and spiral and tears streaming down my face, I felt as if God was telling me… You are going to be ok. This is life. Things are difficult. And I will help you. I will help your body through the healing from all this. You don’t need to be perfectly healed. You can still have a good life.
It’s hard to explain exactly, but I felt such a shift from my previous approach to health. In my extremely holistic healing belief system, everything was connected. And, it is. I’m not saying that it’s not. But there was a such a hyper vigilance around figuring it all out. Healing all of the things I could heal so that everything else could heal, because it’s all connected. The belief was, that my body was going to struggle horribly from all of the trauma to my fascia and tissues and immune system, and that it was already struggling, and that I’d never get above water, and never be able to heal after all of these surgeries. And I had been doing my best to try to heal that way — until this. This was a mountain I could not climb. I could not cope with this. But God … God could. And as peace washed over me, it felt like God was telling me: This is hard. But it’s not the end of the world. And your life can still be good, even if things are difficult and painful. Even if things aren’t perfect. Even if your health isn’t perfect. You are going to be ok.
I knew I was going to be ok. I knew that God was somehow going to help me through this.
That dentist referred me to a surgeon she worked with, to get his opinion, and a quote for the surgeries. And I called and made an appointment.
And then… a friend mentioned another biologic dentist up in New York City. I didn’t want to go to New York City. It’s 2 hours away. It’s not easy to get to. Ohhhhh but she really recommended him, “and they had an in-house surgeon. Just call them and see if you can get another opinion from them.”
So I did. They looked at a 3D scan of my entire head, and he said, “Hmmmmmmmm. I don’t think we should remove this implant if we don’t have to. It’s poking up into your sinus cavity (vindication on the sinus infection. My previous dentist refused to believe it was connected), and if we tear the sinus membrane during the removal of the implant, that’s a whole other surgery you’ll have to get. I mean, we can do it. We can do sinus reconstruction. But…. I think instead we can rehab this implant by taking off the tooth part, cleaning it out, letting it heal, and then seeing how the tissue responds. If it responds well, we will just get you a different type of crown on that implant, with no cement. I have no idea why your dentist was using cement. That always leaves a risk for this kind of thing happening.”
Wow. So … he thought maybe he could prevent the surgeries. And, honestly, if he told me to get the surgeries, he would have made exponentially more money off of me. But he wasn’t. This was good. But what about the corroding titanium implants?!?!?! I asked him about it. “He said, yea. Zirconium is better. If this was on the bottom, I’d say replace it all. But really, we are trying to minimize trauma to your body and mouth, and I think this is risking way more trauma than it’s worth.”
So I drove up to New York. He was going to take off the bottom part of the implant (the part that is the actual tooth that you see) and clean out the gum tissue from the infection. Then put a temporary bridge on the tooth, and let it all heal for a few weeks.
But as he tried, he couldn’t get the crown off. He said it was overtightened by my previous dentist. Argh is there anything he didn’t do wrong?!?!?! He was supposed to be able to pop off that crown in one minute, but instead it took him two hours. He told me: Look. If we can’t get the crown off, we have no choice. We have to schedule a surgery and remove the whole thing.” Oh no. Oh NO. GOD. HELP.
He told me he needed a 15 minute break.
I said, “I am going to pray.”
I prayed. God God God God please please please… just… let him be able to get this out today. But. If he can’t… if he can’t and you want me to remove the whole implant… and then start removing all the other titanium implants one by one, as my body can handle it, and as money allows….. then I will. If you want me to get this surgically removed for my health… I will. I’ll do whatever you want. I’m done. I surrender.
The dentist came back in. He tried for another ten minutes. Oh no… he isn’t going to get it out. Then I felt it fall onto my tongue. He got it.
And he said, “That — was God.”
It was. It was God.
I never had to get the surgeries. I’m currently letting my titanium implants corrode within my jaw until further notice.
No, it wasn’t the miracle cure I prayed for. But that, was God. No question.
The peace was God. The promise to help me was God. The shift in my perspective was God. The surrender I did, was to God. And then, he did help.
It was God.
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