I should have gotten a night guard sooner. Then I wouldn’t have cracked an otherwise perfectly good tooth. That’s how I found myself in a plastic chair with my earphones in and safety glasses on getting ready for multiple Novocain shots. My previous experiences of teeth being pulled for braces and gum graphs given for receding gums, prepared me for this being the worst part. As the dentist walked away for the numbing to begin I felt an odd feeling in my left eye. “Is my eye numb? Why can’t I close it? Why is it tingling” This was a seemingly benign and odd side effect except for the fact that I always need to close my eyes during dental dealings for sanity. I desperately tried, but the dark figure of the dentist coming close with a large shiny instrument blocked my view of the ceiling. My eye then began to tear to keep it from drying but without the blink of an eyelid, the tears flowed down my face. Then the pitchy whirring began. I turned up my book, Bad Therapy to help me escape my present situation. The pain that erupted into my tooth kept me from engaging in my other world. Upon my groan, the dentist removed the mediaeval torture device and gave me more Novocain. This procedure happened three more searing times despite multiple shots given over the joke of red head’s needing more drugs. She even switched up the numbing shot with another type to see if it would take better. About this time I realized I could throw off the spit napkin clipped around my neck and make a run for it. Surely my cracked tooth would not cause as much pain as this whining machine. Then an odd thing happened. The numbness in my eye waned and the former pain from the dreaded drill was gone.

Thus initiated the taste of burning tooth in my mouth and the fear that my wandering tongue would catch the drill. “Surely, she’s almost done. My tooth wasn’t THAT bad.” I played a game of turning up my music (I quickly realized I would miss all the wisdom of the therapy gone wrong and changed it to KLove to counter my negative, yet therapeutic thoughts of dentists) to counter the whirr while dropping it quickly when given directions for the placement of my head. Then the hygienist suddenly caught my nose with the spit sucker. “Sorry!” My thoughts went directly to the fact that she was going to put that directly back into my mouth. Sigh. As the dentist was checking out my sad, new nub, I began to feel the air, water, and pain in my mouth. Thankfully she no longer used the drill but did tell me that due to the amount of Novocain that she shot in my mouth and how closely they had to drill to my gum, my mouth would be sore for the next couple of days. Another sigh.

Next came the phase of making a mold of my minuscule nub for the fake and real crown to be placed. A cocking gun with pink goop was then inserted, released, and pressed down on my left jaw to fashion a mold. The first didn’t take so take two followed. I felt all of this and when asked if I wanted an Advil, I quickly replied with an affirmative. Alas, she continued drilling the fake took while every shot location was felt in my mouth. As my pain increased, I was told to “tap, tap” and “grind, grind” my fake tooth onto some unknown purple paper, she then took out the tooth, adjusted it with a drill, put it back in my mouth, pushed down, then I ground and tapped on repeat until I was about to scream that the fake crown was fine. Then she was done. She handed me the Advil and expected the water to embarrassing flow down my numb face but the numbness was all gone. “Wow, you must have a high metabolism!” I guess I do. But not a lot of patience.

The idea of getting a crown is not lost on me. The bible says we can earn crowns to throw at Jesus’ feet and I lightly made a joke of getting my crown early to my coworkers before being in that plastic chair today. Yet as I reflect on how and why I got this crown it is more fitting to see it as a crown of thorns. Because of my own choices, I got pain, suffering, and a fake crown. It took a perfect man who never sinned to wear the crown of thorns I truly deserve to keep me from ultimate suffering that last forever. He now wears the perfect crown in heaven interceding for me, the one with the fake crown. Then, when I finally see him face to face, my fake crown will be real and I will humbly and thankfully throw it at His feet.