Toothless?

Last night I had a dream that 5 of my teeth fell out.

My front four top teeth came out in one solid unit, and my first upper right bicuspid (see diagram below) kind of just swung out.

Tragic.



I have teeth-falling-out dreams whenever I'm stressed, but this was pretty extreme! FIVE TEETH! Man, oh man. I'm pretty sure the stress trigger for this dream was my Honduras trip which happens in 6 days. SIX DAYS! Man, oh man.

BTW - I'm going to Honduras. I don't think I ever made this official on my blog, but I am. I'm going with a group of 23 20-somethings from my church, including my wonderful boyfriend. We're going to Tegucigalpa, Honduras to do mission work in partnership with His Eyes Mission (http://www.hiseyes.us). I'm very excited about this opportunity to serve God's people! It's been a while since I've done mission work, and I'm more than excited about it!

Anywho. Back to my stress.

Here are the stressful things that I feel like caused my 5-teeth-falling-out dream:

• Money: I sent out fundraising letters a little bit later than I should have for this trip. The total cost per person is $1,250. I'm getting really close to reaching my goal, but these last few days are really crucial for the donations to come in. Also, my boyfriend doesn't have nearly as much financial support as I do right now, and I almost feel guilty. I know I shouldn't, but I do. I feel bad that he will probably have to pay a ginormous amount of money to really go on this trip. But he can do it! :-) I have faith in him.
• Work: For this trip, I'm having to miss a week and a half of work. The way my job is, we don't just ask for time off and get it. We have a subbing process, and we post up our shifts that we're responsible for on our internal webpages, and fellow coworkers can bid on our shifts. This means that there is a possibility that no one will bid on the shifts, and thus no one would cover them. I told my boss about this conflict several, several weeks ago. She JUST finalized the summer work schedule today, and she had told us that it would be done nearly a week ago. So, I JUST found out what my schedule even is like this summer, and now I've posted up all my shifts. Most of them have already been bid on, but I'm just hoping that they will all get covered.
• School: With the stress of the end of the semester and finals and my recital, my mind was just not ready for Honduras yet. And now that I can finally breathe again, Honduras is happening in 6 days. SIX DAYS!

Well, after this dream, I got to thinking... Usually when I have teeth-falling-out dreams, in my dream, I always, ALWAYS try to put the teeth back in place. I usually just shove them back in, or try to hold them in place with my tongue and just hope that no one notices, or hope that I don't make a wrong move and knock them out again! I've even swallowed teeth in my dreams before.

But in this dream, I reacted differently. I didn't care. I had lost 5 of my front top teeth, and I was holding them in my hands looking at them, and I didn't care! This shocks me. But then I started analyzing my dream, as I often do.

My teeth represent the things that are stressful and hard to handle in my life. When I try to put them back in, that's me trying to control things. That's me trying to get a handle on whatever it is that is going on in my life! If I can just push that tooth back in my gum, then everything will be ok!

This dream was different because I knew I had stresses and I didn't care about them! I think this was my way of saying to myself, "Don't worry about it. God will handle this one." What a simple truth that we often forget. Sometimes we can't control the ridiculous things that happen to us, or we can't control the choices our friends are making, or we can't control how much money we don't have. But we can take a step back, look at our teeth in our hands, realizing how ridiculous and disgusting our smile now looks, and rest assured in God's love and grace. Realizing this hasn't necessarily made my stress levels disappear, but at least I'm not worrying as much.

God is in control. Always.

"So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

-Matthew 6:31-34