My Miracle Tooth

I was sitting at the table eating a tasty meal, full of variety and nutrition. I still eat with a goal of 30-50 ingredients during the day even when I am by myself. As a teenager, I had a thyroid condition that disappeared by the right choices of food living in Japan. 

My husband was overseas in Australia and expected to return in a couple of weeks. Happily chewing on my food with my focus on the white fluffy clouds over our ocean view, I put another fork full of food in my mouth. For the first time in my life, I bit hard on my fork. Two teeth broke in half in a highly visible area. Not knowing two teeth were gone, I easily extracted one half of one tooth and swallowed the other. I did not like what I saw in the mirror.  

There is an international dentist more than an hour from us if we take the expressway. My husband and I had visited him, by introduction three years previously, to solve a unique problem. I picked up the phone to call and make an appointment, but Holy Spirit said to wait until my husband returned from overseas. Having no idea why I was to wait, it did not matter. I waited. All I needed to do was lose any pride I might have clinging to me. Right? 

While I waited for two weeks to pass, I still shopped, went to the Post Office, and ate out. He finally arrived after having been caught in a typhoon a couple of nights in Manilla on his return journey. After a couple of days, I asked him to call. His choice was a nearby dentist, but that is not what Holy Spirit instructed me to do. He called and made the appointment. 

The day finally came. Just as I was leaving the house, Holy Spirit told me to get a hand- written note from my desk with the details of my initial introduction. My husband knows well the crowded train station area where the dental clinic is located. On the expressway were unexpected delays even up to 7 km/hr for two kilometers and then delays once off the ramp. We were running out of time. I was driving and my husband directed me to several side roads once we got off the expressway ramp. Finally breaking through onto a main street, I somehow crossed four lanes and my husband was more than ready to take over driving and parking the car. I got out of the car. It was one minute before my appointment, and I hate being late.  

There was a slight problem. He was not sure which building housed the dental clinic. It had been three years, and everything changes quickly in Japan. Holy Spirit told me to take out the note paper I had grabbed at the last minute and ask a man who was in a recessed corner of the back of a building. He had come out for a smoke, and I hate cigarette smoke. It burns my lungs due to intensive smoke inhalation five years previous.  

I walked over and asked, showing him my notepaper. We were not going forward until I said the name of the building. He pointed to the building. It was next door to where we were standing.  

Five minutes later I was in the dental chair waiting for the dentist. At eighty years old, he picks and chooses his patients, and most dentists do not want to work with foreigners. He and my husband, however, had formed a warm connection on our previous visit. Yet still he looked reluctant.  

I told him that in another ten days forty people would be visiting us, and because it was summer, many people would be coming. He then pulled up previous x-rays, nodded his head, and began to glue the broken piece of my tooth to the base. I asked him about the second tooth, and he said he was thinking.  

Knowing him and his intense focus, I was silent. I took out my iPad and began to edit a chapter of my book, watching him out of the corner of my eye. Suddenly he went into action. Calling his assistant and giving directions, soon his work area next to me was full of materials. He had two small containers with three colors in each container and another with material I did not question. I remained silent. 

When finished, he showed me my teeth. Needing no adjustment, they were perfect. I thanked him for honoring a woman’s heart. Sitting next to me, the dentist then explained that he had used a state-of-the-art technology that he used to teach other dentists twenty years ago. The company that produced the material had marketed it worldwide, but it was no longer available. Because he taught, the dentist still had material.  

The dentist had literally built a tooth within the two hours I was in his clinic. Facing me, the dentist told me what he had charged twenty years ago, which was less than other dentists he had trained. He did not know how much to charge us. He added a little more to the cost of twenty years previous.  

Leaving my room, the dentist practically danced out the door and down the hall. He was happy with the results. Returning to the lobby where my husband was waiting, my husband thanked the dentist profusely for not only doing the work, but the low cost. Then the two men bantered back and forth before the dentist went to his next patient.  

Our Heavenly Father always takes such good care of His children. Trusting, when Holy Spirit tells us to do something, we need not know the outcome. We walk by faith and not by sight, and even miracles may happen, like my miracle tooth.