Tooth Fairy

If you have followed my blog, you may remember this blog from July, 2008. It continues to be one of my very favorite stories. I share it again because I can't help but think of all the people I know who need hope this morning.

In another time and place, right before the children were to go on stage to perform their spring musical, another little boy inadvertently elbowed nine-year-old Ben in the mouth. Pain aside, Ben was so very disappointed that the elbow also knocked one of his teeth loose. Ben screwed up his courage and sang the entire musical anyway.

When he got home, Ben stood over the bathroom sink to finish the work the elbow had only begun. As bad as it had been, it did open the possibility of leaving something for the tooth fairy. Then, just as he worked the tooth loose it fell into the sink and down the drain. Ben was horrified! His dad, Scott, who is not a Master plumber but who is a master father, decided to see if he could rescue the tooth by removing the drain trap under the sink. In the process, he got the trap loose but not without breaking another pipe that would require calling a real and very expensive plumber. Now, both father and son were so very disappointed.

The plumber came and, while fixing the broken pipe, discovered something else askew in the plumbing that required climbing under the house to repair. While there, he discovered something more ominous. It was a water leak that had been dripping for some time onto a gas line that runs beneath the house. The leak was just about to corrode a hole in the pipe that would have soon started causing a very dangerous gas leak.

The rest of the story involves older sister Corrie coming to Ben’s rescue. The missing tooth was never found. So, Corrie offered Ben a souvenir. It was a fossilized shark’s tooth she’d had for some time, a prized possession. She gave it to Ben telling him that he could put that under his pillow for the tooth fairy. Ben was aghast. “I can’t put that shark’s tooth under my pillow. The tooth fairy will think I’m a vampire!” His sister’s good intentions persisted and Ben decided to use the shark’s tooth anyway. Just to be sure, he wrote a personal letter to the tooth fairy explaining all that had happened and, what started out as one disappointment after another turned into something very wonderful.

Which is meaning of the tooth parable. Had Ben not been elbowed in the mouth and lost his tooth in the sink causing the plumber to climb under the house, well, none of us would like to think about what could have been had the gas leak not been discovered. The icing on the disappointment turned hope cake was that all of this created an opportunity for big sister to prove her compassion.

One of the greatest and recurring themes of God’s word, from cover to cover, is the promise that what can at first cause us to be so very disappointed can, if we will let the grace of God have its way, come to be seen as nothing more than a painful way hope finds its way into our lives. Sometimes life can be so very disappointing. Even so, we also have this eternal promise from God’s word. “We . . . boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us . . ..”

Hope never disappoints because disappointment is just hope’s doorway into our lives.