two words i'm glad my dentist never said

A few years ago, I bit into something and as I was chewing, I noticed something extra in my food.

Moments later, one of my teeth was laying in my hand and I could only imagine what my mouth would look like if I smiled.

Horrors.

I ran to the bathroom, grinned, and sure enough, there was a gaping hole just to the right of my front teeth. 

Oh. My. Gosh.

A quick call to the dentist with an explanation got me in the chair just hours later.  He took a look, numbed me up, reclined the chair and went to work. 

As I laid there, I really didn't know what he would be up to inside my jaws.  But I had been going to him for years and trusted him entirely.  And with novacaine, I was pretty deadened to any pain and thought I'd just relax and enjoy the ride.  I felt the usual scraping, a bit of drilling, and then something else I'd never experienced before.  It was something of a cleaning out up in and around the tooth and the surrounding area. 

He did this in a repeated action.  Over and over again.  Without saying a word.

Finally, it hit me. 

I'm having a root canal, I thought. 

And what a wise dentist to have never said those two words to me before he began. 

Had he said that to me upon sitting in his chair, the mere utterance of the phrase would have had me clutching the armrests and saying calming mantras in my mind while gasping for breath, because of the reputation of the words.  But not being told and thinking it would be business as usual kept me relaxed and actually finding what he was doing  - the dreaded root canal - to be not so bad after all.

Smart, smart dentist.

This is why God knows the future and I do not.  We do not need to know what's coming down the pike, because it would mess with our minds.  We just need to know Who to trust because He knows the beginning from the end, and He's got it all under control.  He's brought me this far; I can trust Him to take me the rest of the way. 

I'd rather be in something with a God I trust than on the outside fearing and feeling I'm on my own. 

I know I'll never walk alone.  

And that gets me places.