By Katy Curry©
Life is a puzzle. Have you ever felt that way? You think you are doing things right, then you get comfortable, maybe a little too comfortable. Before you know it, things are not doing so well!
Take this week, for instance. I knew we would have just enough money to pay the monthly bills, pick up some Christmas presents (what you get for a thirty-six-year-old son who pretty much gets what he wants is a challenge) and plan a crown rib roast for Christmas Dinner. All was somewhat good in Curry-Land.
Sunday night the phone sounded off with its normally merry tune, but this time it sounded something ominous, I didn’t want to answer it. It was son number two. Lord, give me strength.
“Alloooo, Moooom.” Ok who was talking?
“Frank? Is that you?” I responded hoping it was a friend with a mouth problem.
“Yeah, I’mmmmm shorrry di no get ovvver.” These sounds only a mother could decipher, I could hear the background music of that TV show The Twilight Zone.
“What on earth is wrong with you?” I was still in hopes that this new venture into a time of mystery and the unknown would end without too much pain or expense.
“I ha a toof ache, really urts. Can cloth my mouth. Gum ith all swollen aroun it.”
Ok, it was time for Rod Serling’s voice over to begin and the climactic music to begin playing.
(Don’t get me wrong, I love my son dearly, but God Bless Him, he has never put money aside unless he wanted to buy a “toy” for one of his hobbies. He definitely doesn’t have a dentist.)
“Frank, you have got to go to the dentist. I will make some phone calls.
My dentist called and with my sadly lacking explanation, he decided Frank should come in immediately. Frank got there before I did and it was worse than the doctor had feared. There was no time to set him up with an oral surgeon to do it through anesthesia.
The cost of removing the top and bottom molars, the jaw bone they had fused to, replacing the removed jaw bone with cadaver bone, insert drains, cutting away diseased gum tissue was around four thousand dollars. In my mind, I saw Christmas trees sprout wings and fly off ‘til they were but dots in the distance. No music this time, just flying Christmas trees leaving the area in droves. No wonder those Christmas trees had flown away so fast. The standing rib roast shrank and shrank until it disappeared with the best animator’s “POP!)
Doctor Aswan and I talked; he showed more compassion than any man I know. I shared the tremendous challenges this year had already presented, he then excused himself and went back in his office; shortly, the girl who did the billing called me over while doctor went to work on another patient.
She explained he had brought the bill down to just over thirteen hundred dollars. I swallowed hard and said, “Go ahead, do what he needs.”
Frank could speak better; asked me to sit with him. It was obvious he understood this was a serious situation and that scary things were going to be done to him. He was not just a little scared. It if had been me, I would have been shaking in my boots and crying just a little.
The procedure began and just the application of the numbing agent prior to the Novocain was painful to him. When Dr. Aswan arrived, I took that as a signal to leave. Much as I love my son, I could not bear to watch what was about to happen.
For the next two and a half hours, I heard him moaning and gurgling in abject agony. The Novocain was not as effective as all had hoped. Slowly the teeth came out, in pieces, and with them the fused jaw bone. Then came the replacement bone, the sewing, the cutting away of dead gum tissue and all that goes into such an operation. It was done not once but twice! The same procedure was mirrored on the upper jaw.
Christmas would be a bit more humble this year, but the first Christmas was very, very humble
My “Twilight Zone” experience was perhaps a lesson that was an answer to the puzzle of life. Don’t forget who is really running things and in all things act in humility and obedience.
find in cyberworld on the Monday after Thanksgiving. The message is if you care about someone you will buy, buy buy. So, is that what Christmas is, a time to spend money you don’t have on things people probably don’t want?
ch year families go out and select a tree for their home decorate it with lights and baubles, put all those presents they are told by retailers they need to give to love and feel loved. Then in 2 or 3 weeks they will take that tree down and drag to the curb. Just another piece of trash.
cookies, the fudge, the goodies that come in from everywhere!. An extra hour of workout this week! Now don’t forget all those TV specials. The kids jump up and down, watch for a bit and somewhere along the way you realize you are watching “Rudolph” or any of the myriad of Christmas specials they run year after year after year. You can sing the songs along with the characters you know them so well.
the day Jesus Christ, the Son of God the Father, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity left His heavenly throne to come to earth as a helpless baby to lay in a trough, a place where animals ate. To live a human life, to stub His toe, scrape His knee, to have to listen to Mom and Dad, to be hungry and thirsty, to have to submit to elders. All the while having been the One who created the universe, the earth and all that was in it.
using their hate and love of anarchy and violence to claim to fight for their god. They steal childhood from children, kill indiscriminately, rape, torture, all in the name of Allah. I feel no joy in this, my outward joy, it is measured.
themselves to sleep because they or their parents may not survive the night. As long as we have such hatred in this world as to allow families to die of cold or starvation as happens in Syria right now; as long as we have drive-by shootings that kill innocent children so some punk can qualify for a gang, I take little joy in the trappings of Christmas. Oh yes, the tree is up, the presents in all their profusion are slowly making their way under it. Plans for a feast that will leave everyone groaning from too much food are in full swing, and I will love all of it. But in my mind’s eye, I will see the children I sponsor who may not survive because they are in the wrong place to be Christian, I will see little children forced to kill, others dead because of the cruelty of a belief. I will think of those who have given up, who can’t face another Christmas alone or without a job and I will think of the Reason for the Season, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We are His flo
ck and He is our shepherd and He will look after each of us as lovingly as we see Him nurture the lamb in His arms. My spirit is in my heart, in my prayers for those I know in harm’s way,
Living & Loving Life 