“I love your smile!” she proclaimed as we passed each other while changing classes in Bible college. I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Did I hear that right?” I wondered. “That can’t be true. Wait, was I even smiling?”
I didn’t know the girl. But her words, which seemed genuine, shocked me to the core and went deep into my spirit. No one had ever said that to me before. My smile — my teeth in particular — had long been a source of shame and embarrassment to me.
Hypodontia is the medical term for it — the congenital absence of one to six teeth. My mother had it, and she passed it on to me. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I became aware of it — probably by age seven. I was different. Something important was missing — something others had and I didn’t. I had gaps in my teeth, which in turn felt like gaps in my soul. Somehow missing teeth equaled lack and insufficiency to me.
By the time I attended Bible college, I was beginning to discover who I was, who God created me to be, but there were gaps — empty places — I was asking my heavenly Father to fill. Inadequacy and insufficiency plagued me, leaving me feeling crippled. However, my loving Father was healing me.
Sometimes He used people, even strangers, to speak words of life. They helped change my perspective of myself and opened up brand new worlds of affirmation. I knew that in Christ I was a new creation. But did that new creature have a dazzling, full smile?
I remembered hearing that the meaning of the Hebrew word shalom, often interpreted as peace, also included “nothing missing, nothing broken.” “Father, are you telling me that in Christ, I have nothing missing?” I asked later that day. “Am I complete in You?”
“Bingo!” He replied.
Just for fun, I looked up Scriptures on teeth and discovered this gem from the Song of Solomon 4:2 HCSB. It was the young man, who represents Jesus, speaking to His bride. “Your teeth are like a flock of newly shorn sheep coming up from washing, each one having a twin and not one missing.”
How about you? Do you believe there is something missing in how you were created? Ask Your heavenly Father how He wants to fill that part of you.
~ Janet Mueller, writer
~ photo by Polly Sadler, Unsplash
