flossing my life

I went to the dentist the other day. I hate going to the dentist. It stresses me out, and I have an abnormal fear of the dentist coming in with a long needle, dripping with some anesthesia, and saying, "I'm sorry, but you have a cavity. We must drill. Here, have some Novocaine." Needle goes in and I cry out in agony. This has never happened to me, but I'm convinced it will some day.

Anyways, I went in. I like my dentist's office. The room is bright and cheery with pictures of happy people because they don't have gingivitis or plaque. Their teeth are abnormally white because "They love their local dentist", and the pictures give me an odd feeling that makes me think - I might look that good when I get out of the chair. They have a television hanging from the ceiling which is always turned to ABC Family so you can watch reruns of "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" or "Step By Step", while they scrape the crap off of your teeth.

Disclaimer: I'm not sure if they call the people that clean your teeth nurses or technicians, but it took two tries for me to spell "technicians" right, so I'm going to go with nurse.

The nurse started cleaning my teeth. It took - cue "Sandlot" kid voice - FOREVER. I watched one and a half episodes of "Sabrina" before she started the polishing process. Then it got me thinking, Wow. I have a lot of plaque. Maybe I should start flossing more often. I know that's gross, but this story ends up being redemptive - promise. Then I took the flossing idea way farther than it probably should've been taken, but oh well. Paul/Jesus tells me that I should take my thoughts captive. That is flossing my brain. I floss my brain to prevent the thoughts from taking hold. However, I've just been brushing. The thoughts come, but I don't take them captive. I don't necessarily act on them, but the thoughts remain and build up, just like my nasty plaque, and then Jesus, the ever so patient dentist, has to come and scrape away my sinful thought life and it takes awhile to get back to normal. He doesn't mind - that's what He loves to do - but He would be pretty excited if I kept "flossing" so the crap wouldn't build up.

I'm trying to apply this spiritually. To remind myself to take my thoughts captive, I'm keeping my trial size box of floss in my jacket pocket. I also floss before I go to bed. Nice.

Side note: I started wearing my retainer again because I wanted to take my mouth to the next level. I tried to think of a cool spiritual metaphor for that, but then I'd be trying to be cool and spiritual and want people to think "Wow, she's cool. She applies her pink, sparkly retainer back to Jesus in a way that applies to my life too! I want to be in her club." That's not going to happen. And I don't need to try hard, because that's, well, quite fake and not honest. SO all I have to say about retainer is - my teeth hurt like poop.