Grace

I’m about half-way through a major dental reconstruction project and I can tell you it’s been brutal.  I’ll be pleased in the extreme when the job is done.

Earlier this week I spent another four-plus hours in the chair.  Three hours in I’d had the four craters formed by the removal of four crowns and parts of four teeth “packed with cord.”  That’s the term the very young, very new assistant used.  It wasn’t awful, what with the numerous injections for numbing I’d insisted upon, but it was surely unpleasant.  And time-consuming.  She’d made the impressions for the four temporary crowns and, apparently, removed the cords.  Thus far, I’d been able to keep up and even to exhibit some grace in the process.  I smiled and chatted whenever there were no hands and/or instruments in my mouth.

But now I was told the impressions hadn’t taken and would need to be repeated.  Gulp.  OK.  And right after that I heard the assistant say, “I’ll repack the cords now.”

Grace fled.

“Repack the cords?” I asked incredulously, and maybe a little loudly, and sat up.  I could see I’d startled the young woman.  I was a little startled myself.

“Well, . . . yes,” she said uncertainly.  “It all needs to be redone.”

I sat back.  Oh, mercy!  Grace was distant but it was grace that was needed at this moment.  Time to pray.  “Lord, give me patience.  Help me to be gracious.  I know these things happen.  Just please enable this process and bring me out the other side.  Soon.  Be with (name of the assistant).  Thank You.  Amen.”

And while I lay there being “repacked,” I thought of instances when grace had been extended to me by others and for which I was grateful every time.  One stands out.

I was driving on a busy freeway in a large city, somewhat lost in thought.  I saw my exit coming up and realized I needed to be in the lane to my right.  Over I went without taking proper care.  As I belatedly looked, I could see a wide-eyed woman right next to me.  She was gripping the wheel hard and trying to maintain her position, cars ahead of her and cars behind her.  She had nowhere to go and I was just inches away.

I swerved back, clapped my hand over my mouth in horror, and caught her eye.  Apologizing as best I could with gestures and mouthed words, I quaked with the knowledge that I might easily have badly injured her, or worse.  She would have been similarly aware.  But she waved and smiled at me.

That’s grace.  I didn’t deserve that response but am extremely grateful that it’s the response I got.  And now, in the dental chair, I was being given the opportunity to extend grace myself, to wave and smile.  I collected myself and did just that.

“Thank you,” I said when she was done, and grinned.  “Good job.”