The Ruth Tooth Extraction
This was Carter when he was seven years old.
For a week prior to this video, I was coaching and bribing and coaxing Carter into trying to pull his loose tooth out. I’m not sure why he was so fearful of pulling his tooth out. Maybe it was the fear of it hurting. Maybe it was the fear of it possibly bleeding. Maybe it was the fear of change. I even told him that I would tie a string to his tooth and attach it to my car and hit the gas to rip it out. But that didn’t work either. (Actually, that probably made his fear worse.) Whatever it was, Carter would not even attempt to try to pull his tooth out.
So, each night, for seven straight days, I would ask him… “Are you ready yet? Do you think your tooth is ready yet?” And for seven straight evenings he would reply with a, “No.” No follow up questions. Don’t pass go. This tooth ain’t ready. Carter knew the tooth was going to come out. He had lost two teeth before… two teeth that literally fell out on their own because the adult tooth pushed them straight out. So he knew that, at some point, the tooth was going to be “lost.”
You see, he wanted this one to be different. He, deep down, wanted to pull this one out on his own. He wanted to be the one to pull the tooth out and not let it simply be pushed out by the adult tooth coming in. But, he was scared. He knew that what he wanted to do was good. It was natural. And it was needed for the next step to occur. But still, night after night… day after day he was scared and wasn’t ready…
Until the night of the video.
That night, he said… “I think I want to try dad.” And, like any good dad would say, I said, “Wait, let me get my phone to record it coming out!” The video that you watched is just one minute and 11 seconds. The actual time the it took from start to finish to get the tooth out… just over two hours. Two hours of coaching. Two hours of encouraging. Two hours of making jokes to ease his nerves. Two hours of standing by his side and he pushed through the fear to extract that “fiesty” tooth as he put it.
This isn’t the first time that Carter has been scared to try to accomplish something. And it’s not going to be the last. My job as a parent is to stand by him and help him push past the fear if he chooses. To let him know that I’m by his side, cheering him on.
As a parent, we can see the other side. We can see that everything will be ok. It’s so easy to get frustrated by that. To not understand where they are at in their fear and to only focus on the end goal. But as a child, they can’t see that end goal. They can only see the immediate place where they’re at… fear. It’s our job to help them walk through that place to come out on the other side not only ok, but also a better person having learned to walk to the other side of fear, despite their fear.
You know, God does the same thing with us as well. Sure, he doesn’t physically hold our hand. But He’s right there beside us giving us comfort as we walk to the other side of our fear, despite our fear. Check this out:
Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. Joshua 1:9
Our God has promised to be with us wherever we go. Whether it’s during this time of quarantine or after, our God will never leave us. He is there. For you. For me. For us. As you walk with your child through their fears, despite their fears, know that our God is doing the same with us… through our fears, despite our fears.
