The Best Worst News

One day, about two weeks ago, I noticed that my eight year old son’s tooth was crooked. It was one of his top, front teeth, and it was jutting out at a thirty-degree angle.

I did not remember it always being this way. It was rather obvious - hard to miss, really. How could I not have seen it until now?

He had some teeth fall out recently; this must be one of the new adult teeth growing in, I figured. Completely crooked.

Should I call the dentist to see if something could be done about it? Or perhaps I should just wait until his next appointment?

I asked him if something happened. I thought perhaps it could have been caused by a fall, or a bump. There did not appear to be any major incident that pointed to this sticking out tooth of his.

Great News!

Then, one night at bedtime, my son was playing upstairs with his sister. I was downstairs with another child, cleaning up from the art project we did that afternoon.

As soon as I came upstairs, my son excitedly ran over to me.

“Great news!” he shouted. “We bumped heads when we were playing, and look at my tooth!”

Bad News

I looked. I saw a lot of blood, and a tooth that was about to be ejected from his gums.

Uh oh.

As much as I didn’t like the tooth jutting out, I didn’t want it to get knocked out! I could already envision a hole in the front of his mouth. In my mind, I was running to the dentist to get him a false tooth.

Grasping for some way out, I asked him to try to remember if that tooth had already fallen out. Was it really an adult tooth, or might it possibly be a baby tooth?

I resolved to call the dentist in the morning. At the very least, the dentist would hopefully have a record of which teeth had fallen out so far.

In the meanwhile, we decided to brush around that tooth, and to be very careful not to knock it out all the way.

Good News After All

I had him rinse out his mouth, and then we brushed his teeth. I had him open his mouth really wide, and looked inside yet again. (Despite telling myself not to worry, I was worried!)

Wait - what was that under the tooth?

Indeed, it was another tooth! Hooray! The knocked out tooth was a baby tooth after all! The adult tooth was already growing in underneath, and was the cause of the baby tooth angling out all crooked!

This really was great news! Not only did he not knock out an adult tooth, the crooked-tooth problem was solved as well!

The Moral of the Story

Things aren’t always the way they seem to be.

Sometimes bad things look good. Sometimes good things look bad.

We can jump to conclusions and panic, or we can trust that the One who is running the show knows what He is doing. We can fear that there is no way out of a bad situation, or we can believe that Hashem will guide us in the right direction.

In each situation, big or small, the choice is ours.

How will you choose to view the world today?