Yesterday we had a consultation with the same orthodontist who shepherded my older two boys through their season of braces.

It seems Jesse has the complete opposite problem they did. They had overbites: he has a pretty pronounced underbite. His teeth have compensated by tipping inward: if they were straight, they would overlap his top teeth.

And that presents a problem: if they straighten the teeth without adjusting the skeletal problem of his jaw, he’d probably be worse off than leaving his bottom teeth crooked.

Thankfully the top teeth are pretty much ok, so when he smiles or when school pictures are taken it isn’t obvious he has anything wrong.

This particular type of problem is one that, when fixed orthodontically, can revert back if he grows significantly within the next few years. And at age 15, he probably does have a great deal more growing to do. So for now we wait and see what happens with his growth. They have their measurements from the x-rays they took, and we’ll go in about every six months to see how things are going. Once there has been no major growth within a six-month period, then we’re probably safe to start treatment.

Hopefully some of the jaw problem will grow in the right way. But if that doesn’t happen, or if the jaw situation gets worse…then we are looking at possible surgery to remove part of the jawbone. The doctor hopes that won;t be necessary, but felt he needed to mention the possibility in order to give us the complete picture. If he didn’t mention it now, and then brought up the need in a year, we would wonder why it hadn’t been mentioned.

I was wishing, however, that he hadn’t told me all of this in front of Jesse. I don’t want him to worry about the possibility for the next year especially when we can’t do a thing about it except wait and see how he grows.

As we got in the car afterward. I asked Jesse, “You’re not worried about the possibility of surgery are you?” He seemed to have taken it in stride.

But he answered, “Yeah, I kind of am.”

So we went back over what the doctor had said and discussed the need to pray about it and hope for the best, but to also trust the Lord that if He allows it, He will help us through it.

Later I got to thinking that this may well be the first major issue Jesse has had to pray and trust the Lord for. He’s too young to remember when I first got TM, and though we have prayed about things as a family and for our church and friends, and I have shared answers to prayer with the boys, but this is the first big thing to affect Jesse directly. And in the grand scheme of things, of course, it is not as big a deal as cancer or a heart transplant or that sort of thing, but, still, facing any surgery can be scary.

My heart’s desire all along for all of my boys has been that they develop their own relationship with the Lord. They have all made professions of faith and I think have seen the Lord work in our family. But part of that relationship is trusting the Lord through trial, or, in this case, learning to give the situation over to Him and trust Him for it while waiting for the outcome. In my desire as a parent to ease my children’s way through life, I can’t shield them from everything. And that is probably a good thing, because if I want them to be mature spiritually when they leave our home, they will have to go through some of these kinds of situations.

So, though if I had had the choice I would have shielded Jesse from the possibility of surgery, God in His wisdom allowed it as a first experience in learning to trust.