Long Suffering

I know that I don't really know serious suffering, when compared with what I see other people going through.  I have never had a close relative die, not yet anyway.  I know that is inevitable, unless I die first, but I haven't experience it yet. All of my children are relatively healthy.  I've never been homeless.  I've never been hungry, except by choice.  My hometown hasn't been destroyed by a tsunami or an earthquake.  I'm not waiting to find out if my family died in a tornado.  Nobody in my family has cancer.  I mean, I know how truly blessed I am and how many terrible horrible bad and really truly awful things could happen to my family that haven't- yet. I have had some trials and bouts of suffering that were hard for me to bear, things like terrible morning sickness, being poor, living away from family, parenting challenges, marriage issues, and health challenges.  Some of the things I've been through are too personal to share with most people and others might look at me and my life and think that I don't know true suffering.  I probably do that to other people too.  I try not to.  The more trials I get to experience, the more I understand that just about everyone is going through something that is really hard for them.  It may not be something that will cause death or a permanently affect life, but it is still hard.  So, while I qualified this post at the beginning by saying that I don't "know serious suffering", I don't really think that is true for most people by the end of life.  And it isn't true of me.  Everyone has troubles and everyone has blessings.  I have experienced trials that I never thought I would be able to bear, trials I can't imagine volunteering to go through, trials that gave me the opportunity to strip down my life and my heart to the most basic components and rely on my Savior Jesus Christ and the power of the atonement to pull me through.  While, I never would have picked some of my trials, I am so grateful for the things I learned in dealing with them.  It's one thing to believe in the atonement and it's another to use it in every aspect possible- to repent, to find a way to forgive, and to heal a hurting heart.  It is real.
 I am so grateful that I got to know the atonement in a very personal way years ago before getting my current trial. I've complained about it a ton, so most people know that I have trouble with my mouth.  Just over a year ago I started to have pain in one of my molars when I chewed on it.  I went in to the dentist and had an xray and exam and he couldn't find anything wrong. He told me to try sensitive toothpaste and I did with no relief.  2 months later I gave birth to Emmeline and was busily immersed in caring for her.  When she was a couple of weeks old, my tooth broke while eating a bowl of chili.  I was pretty horrified because this had never happened to me before and I'm really upset whenever I have to get a filling.  It has something to do with a part of my tooth being drilled away and being gone FOREVER.  I worry that I won't have any teeth left by the time I'm 50 and I'll have to get dentures or implants. My tooth just randomly breaking off sent me into a physical mode of panic.  I was hyperventilating.  It freaked me out in a big way.  I went in for an emergency filling because it was a Saturday.  I thought my troubles were over, but they were just beginning.  After the filling, I didn't chew on that tooth for a couple of weeks.  It wasn't the same as before.  It was shorter and it felt funny.  But, I finally decided to trust it and chew on it and everything was going fine for a week or so, until the 4th of July breakfast for Judd's parents' ward.  My tooth was suddenly sensitive to cold.  I went back into the dentist and he told me to try sensitive toothpaste again.  Over the next week I developed pain in my chewing muscles and my teeth all started to hurt.  My top teeth felt like they were being squeezed together and they started to hit my bottom teeth when I talked.  All of my teeth hurt. My top teeth started to move a tiny bit when I ate food or talked or touched them and I can hear this little click.  It's really gross and upsetting.  Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't.  Nobody knows why.
 I went back into the dentist.  He put me on motrin for two weeks to try and reduce inflammation.  That didn't work.  He made me a small mouth guard. That didn't work.  I went to another dentist for another opinion.  He wanted to equilibrate my teeth ( shave them here and there to improve my bite) and make me another mouth guard and give me a crown- for $2,500.  I went back to my dentist. I think I went to my dentist 8 or 9 times last summer.   He referred me to a jaw specialist who told me my bite is terrible and that I'm grinding and clenching and that I need braces and physical therapy. I was pretty happy about that.  It seemed right to me.  I could feel that my bite was wrong.  It used to feel fine, but somehow it became so very wrong.  Throughout all of this, my symptoms never went away, but sometimes got a little better and other times were so bad that it became really difficult to be nice to people.  I went to an orthodontist for a consultation.  He said I needed jaw surgery because my palate needs to be expanded.  Because I am an adult and have a fused palate, it must be done surgically.  That was in October of last year.  I also went to see the P.T.  She helped me learn a lot about jaw problems- specifically TMJ. I don't actually have TMJ, because I don't have any deterioration of my jaw joint, but I have similar problems.  I learned how to sleep correctly, how to talk correctly, how to stand correctly, how to relax when I feel my jaw tightening, how to be careful and protect my jaw from hyper extending my ligaments that are weak and like to move in ways that they shouldn't.  Who knew that being able to bend my pinkies completely backwards is a bad thing?  Anyway, that was helpful, but when I went to see the oral surgeon, everything came crashing down.  The surgery, which is completely scary to me and involves actually cutting all my teeth off and apart and then pinning me back together, costs $10,000. The braces are $5,000.  At this point, I had paid over $1,000 just to try and find out what was wrong with me.  We have one child in braces and one with a palatal expander.  Two of our kids have glasses and need them replaced twice a year or more because their eyes are changing so quickly.  They don't have insurance for those things.  I don't have any insurance at all- long story, but I'm uninsurable. The oral surgeon doesn't take payments.  And I don't have $10,000, or even enough extra money to put it on a 0% interest credit card for a year and pay it off, at the same time as paying for the braces, which must go on for 6 months before the surgery.  I feel very strongly, after much prayer and several priesthood blessings, that I am supposed to get the braces and the surgery.  It's been 7 months since I found out I needed them and I haven't done anything.  Well, except live in pain every single day.  Some or all of my teeth hurt all the time. I get sores from rubbing against the mouth guard. The muscle pain comes and goes and I keep on massaging and practicing deep breathing.  It isn't as bad as it was at first because I've learned some things to help me not make things worse, like NEVER letting my teeth touch EVER.  But, sometimes they do.  My jaw muscles are whacked and my teeth smack together with no warning when I am talking.  It hurts a little at first and then it hurts more later for a long time.  I still wear my little mouth guard and I chatter my teeth against it at night without meaning to. In the morning sometimes my teeth vibrate like a wind up toy I have another tooth that is going crazy with sensitivity, even though I've been using sensitive toothpaste for a year.  It just hurts for no good reason.  It was getting better, but now it's getting worse again.
 I dream of a day when I won't think about my teeth once during that day.  I dream of a day where I can eat crunchy or hard food again, or ever just chew normally, where I don't bite my cheeks in my sleep and get sores, where I can talk without it feeling like my mouth and lips belong to an alien.  I dream of owning my mouth again and loving my mouth again and my muscles calming down and my teeth aligning properly.  I don't know when I will get the braces.  I wanted to wait until my baby was older and she is getting older now.  We had to wait to try and save some money, and we are still working on that.  $15,000 is a lot of money. So, this is my trial that is teaching me a little bit about long suffering, or suffering for a long time.  It's teaching me about patience.  It is increasing my empathy for the suffering of others.  It is helping me to curb bad habits like talking too much and biting my fingernails. It even helped me lose the baby weight. There are always blessings mixed in with the trials. Always. I do not know how or when this pain will end, or even if it will. But I do know that with God nothing is impossible and that I will either be healed or I will be given the strength I need to suffer with patience. Part of me wishes I were strong enough to never talk about, to never complain. Another part of me believes people should be more open about trials and let others in instead of pretending everything is okay. I learn from the strength and examples of those who suffer long. I watch my neighbor who needs a wheelchair to get around. He has a disease that will kill him eventually. But, he doesn't let it keep him down. Last week he came over with his daughter and got on his hands and knees in my parking strip and taught me, and helped me pull up a long section of grass.  His arms are really strong. His spirit is even stronger. I guess that is the goal in the end, to overcome the physical body, whatever maladies befall us, and to find a way for our true selves, our spiritual selves, to rise above the physical and become something wonderful in spite of it.  Part of the blessing of the physical body is problems that come with it and teach us things we can't learn any other way, many times at price that is too painful to be willing to pay, but that we pay anyway because we have no choice.  I know this is really long and rambling.  Sorry.  Usually, I write things like this in my personal journal and I don't worry about how long it is.  Maybe it's a little preachy too.  I'm not going for that.  I know I have a ton more living and learning to do.  I just wanted to share this slice of my life.  Maybe it will help someone.  Maybe nobody is ever going to read this, but maybe someone will read it who is having a completely different but completely overwhelming trial, and it will help.  Maybe I will read this again in 5 years and it will help me. If my mouth is still hurting in 5 years, I'll need it!  And if my house burns down, I want this to float around in cyberspace so I can always find it.  I'm feeling like this is really cheesy right now and the temptation to just erase it is getting strong, but I'm going to resist. I know to a lot of people the pain I am suffering is something they would gladly trade their suffering for, and I wouldn't blame them.  I wouldn't trade with the 29 year old mother of 5 with stage 3 breast cancer.  I wouldn't trade with my poor mother, afflicted with so many physical ailments we are calling her Jobette.  I'm not trying to say I'm going through something so intensely horrible that nobody has ever suffered this much and nobody could understand.  I know others have suffered this much and more, and I know that Jesus Christ understands.  It's so humbling to me, so hard to comprehend how He bore all of our pain and suffering.  Yet, I know that He did and that He does understand and lift me up.  And I know that when the harder things come in my life, some of those really awful things like death, cancer, or who knows what, that He will see me through them too.