I'm a Total Chicken

Confession: I'm a total wuss.  A chicken, really.  For years after leaving home, I avoided making dentist appointments because the little spinning thingy they use to clean your teeth gives me the heebie-jeebies.  I have vague (yet somehow still horrific) memories of being admitted to the hospital overnight for an asthma attack when I was little; I was put in a room with a bunch of crying babies and barely slept all night.  I initially decided to have natural childbirths, not because I wanted that flowery, hippie momma experience, but because I nearly puked in the tray they passed around in the hospital childbirth class...in it lay the needle they would use for the epidural.  I can't watch those "junkie" movies without turning away in disgust (yes, Trainspotting nearly scarred me for life), and even worse, I can barely make it through a blood draw without serious mental prayer.

But tomorrow I have to go to the hospital for a "routine medical procedure" that will involve anesthesia.  It's nothing earth-shattering, but it feels that way to me in some respects.  At first glimpse, it seems the opposite of the "pain with a purpose" of childbirth...which seems so much easier for me to handle.  Instead, it seems like it's just going to be a whole lot of yuck, ick, and nastiness.  It has been a little stressful this week to answer questions like, "Do you have a living will or a medical directive?" and to get a message on my cell phone today stating the following:

Please do not eat or drink after midnight tonight.  This includes candy, chewing gum, breath mints, cough drops, cigarettes or anything you could possibly put into your mouth and swallow.  (WHO SWALLOWS CIGARETTES???!!!  She didn't say that, that's me saying that, by the way.)  You may brush your teeth in the morning, but do not swallow any water.  We ask that you don't wear any body creams, jels, powders, makeup, eyeliner, mascara, rings, body-piercings, perfume, deodorant or fingernail polish.  And wear loose comfortable clothing.

And THIS is what they tell you for a "routine procedure!???!!!"  It is routine, I know it is, and I have to keep reminding myself of that.  Of that and the fact that there is no such thing as purpose-less pain.  I've been thinking a lot this week about how much purpose pain and suffering can have in our lives.  If nothing else, I feel just a tiny bit closer to God, and to his Son, who endured a lot more than "yuck, ick" suffering.  He bore a whole lot so that one day none of us would have to suffer at all.  In whatever way I can unite myself with Him and his offering to me, I think I join in that offering somehow.  Instead of a total one-way street, the suffering becomes a two-way street, and when that happens, as many saints have recognized and spoken so poetically about, it becomes less suffering and more love.  Him for me, and I for Him.  Tomorrow might be a small thing, but to me it's a big thing.  And I know He sees that.

Pray for me tomorrow morning.  :-)