M. I. A.

Well, it is confirmed.  My "teeth" are missing in action.  Ehren and I both had Friday off so we could get up early and spend a weekend with his sister Ingrid and her family.  It's been a while since we saw them and they weren't able to come for Christmas so we were all excited to spend some time with them.  Plus, Ehren hasn't seen their new house in Morris yet.

Well, Friday morning turned out to be quite the night mare of a morning.  We were all getting breakfast, while Ehren and I were packing some stuff but mostly I was in the kitchen.  My last memory of my poor retainer was as I was quickly taking bites of my toast.  I glanced at it sitting on the kitchen counter and thought to myself how I need to brush it out really well before we take off.  And ever since then, it is just GONE.  As soon as I realized I couldn't find it I went into panic mode.  Just crying, getting angry and looking everywhere frantically.  Ehren and I  spent the next hour searching every inch of the kitchen and then the rest of the house where I was that morning but no luck.  Then both him and I went thru the trash 3 times just to make sure.  Still nothing.  At one point I just sat down on the floor and cried. :)

But then I realized something.  I'm not going to find it anyway so I might as well just suck it up and get on our trip to see Ingrid even with my huge gap of 2 missing teeth in the front.  I was not going to let the stupid retainer ruin our weekend.  So we got everything in the van and started our trip.  I was still feeling really sorry for myself and very self conscious about leaving the house like that so I cried for a while. :)

And then I opened the book that Jessica let me borrow called "Kisses from Katie" and the tears almost never stopped. :)  Not because of my stupid self pity party but because it is an amazing story of how a young girl devotes her life to Jesus and lives for others.  Katie comes from a pretty well-off family in the US but chose to live in Uganda as a 19 year old, taking care of hundreds of orphans and has adopted 16 of them by the time she was 21.  Just her describing the poverty and death these little children live in every day makes you cry and me worrying about missing teeth seemed so trivial all of a sudden.  So stupid and pathetic.  Most often than not I don't put much emphasis on my physical appearance and wearing sweat pants and absolutely no makeup is my usual but somehow talking to people with this huge gap in my teeth makes me feel very self conscious.

But I think God made me read that book to open my eyes and see how trivial my "problem" is.  There are kids who are dying of starvation and disease every minute and I worry about some missing teeth?  It really humbled me right on the spot.  We just have so much here in the US and don't even know it.  This Katie talks about how she loves it there because people in Uganda have nothing yet they have such joy in their lives, praising God day in and day out.  They are fully dependent on Him and us because we are so self sufficient just don't need God as much (or so we believe) and so our lives are so much emptier and lacking joy.  Reading it made me think about my life and how much I take for granted.  How much of my time in a day is spent on stupid, empty things.  How little I serve God, how little I give and how little I care about people around me.  It is very eye opening and I'm so glad I got to read this book.

Now we're back from Ingrid'd house and it's almost time for kids to go to bed.  Still no retainer.  I went thru that trash one more time to make sure it wasn't hiding in there but no, it's not there.  Ehren and I can't believe how it would just disappear.  Tomorrow I have all the kids coming to our house and I was hoping to find it by then but I guess I'll have to stay toothless for a while yet and practice some real humility.  The thing is too that in about 2-3 weeks I am scheduled to get my permanent teeth in and I'm thinking I will have to suck it up and stay this way until then.  I'll call my dentist in the morning to find out what to do but I already know I don't want to pay for a new retainer that will only be for 2 weeks or so.

So that is my story about this weekend.  We had a great time with Ingrid and her girls.  Brent had to work at a hospital so we only saw him briefly but it was so nice to hang out with them.  They have a new kitten so all the kids including Ehren loved cuddling with it.  And our kids finally did some sledding because they have more snow than we do.  It was just a nice relaxing weekend which I probably would have spent taking our house apart looking for my retainer,  feeling miserable, if we stayed home.