God’s Plan: Part I

contributed by Adam T.

Everything happens for a reason. That was a piece of wisdom my mother would often tell me as I was growing up. I never really gave it a whole lot of thought until I saw how God was working in my life.

I was born with a genetic condition called Ectodermal Dysplasia. Two pretty big words for a condition that basically affects the development of the skin, hair, teeth and nails. I had very pale skin as a child along with thin flyaway almost white blonde hair and deficient cheekbones. When my teeth did come in I had a total of twelve when I should have had thirty-two. On the top front I had four teeth that were small crooked and spaced widely enough apart to fit a finger through. On the bottom front all I had were two canine teeth that stuck up in points resembling fangs. As if that were not enough I also had a deformed nose and jaw. I had not developed a full set of sweat glands so whenever it got warm my body would not sweat and cool off. So I had to be aware of where my temperature was and not over do it in terms of physical exertion or I ran the risk of passing out and dying. I picture me back then from time to time; painfully thin almost as white as a ghost with my hair going in about a hundred different directions and a closed mouth smile.

When I started school I stood out and not for the reasons that kids want to stand out for. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying kids can be cruel. They can also be creative. I was called all sorts of names, Frankenstein, Dracula and fang face to name a few. One time I was even teased by a set of parents at a school play. It was so hard. I came home so many times crying because of what people had said or done. I was so hurt and so angry. I was angry at the world and I was angry with God. Why me? Why did I have to be born like this? My parents would hold me and comfort me as best they could. My mother would tell me that this was my trial by fire and that everything would one day be better because God had a plan and everything happened for a reason. I can honestly say that I did not believe her.

When I was 10 my front teeth were capped in order to give them a more normal look. The front teeth were spaced so far apart however that the teeth looked surprisingly big in my mouth. Which gave rise to the kids calling me bucky the beaver and hippo face. There were fights growing up. I was not always completely without sin but I came to realize that I was not much of a fighter either. There were times when I let the anger overtake me and I would hit back. My freshmen year in high school I was being teased by an upper classman who started to shove me. In my anger I shoved back and then he proceeded to beat me into unconsciousness. Blessed are the peacekeepers took on a whole new meaning for me, after I regained consciousness.

I was scheduled to go into surgery between my freshmen and sophomore year in high school. Medical insurance was paying for a large portion of it but our end of it was going to be around $2000 dollars. Between raising four boys my parents, with two incomes, simply did not have the money. My mother has always been a firm believer in God Provides. At 15 I was still skeptical based on my past it was hard for me to hold out hope for much of anything. Oh me of little faith. When my parents got their tax return back that year it was for the exact amount we needed for the surgery. How awesome is that? That is truly God providing for what I needed at that time. I would not know about this or even fully appreciate it for many years to come but God had a plan for me that had been in place since before time began.

That summer I had my jaw surgically broken in two places, realigned and wired together. It was not a picnic to say the least. Because I had so many missing teeth they had to run the wires that held my jaw together into the gum and around the jawbone itself. I came to find out that some of the most sensitive nerves in the body run right along the jaw line. I had a space of about an inch by half inch in which to eat. Though I could not chew so it was mostly protein shakes and this was back before they realized that protein shakes did not have to taste nasty. My cheeks were so swollen from the procedure that I looked like a deranged chipmunk stomping around the pediatrics ward. I was on a pretty strict liquid diet and was none too thrilled about it. At one point I was so desperate for real food that I took a piece of pizza and ground it up in a blender with tomato sauce. It was not quite as good as I had hoped.

About two weeks after the surgery I woke in the middle of the night nauseated. I was going to throw up with my jaws wired together and I would be lucky if I did not drown myself. I ran to the bathroom and tried to drink some Pepto-Bismol in an effort to stave off the nausea and not throw up. The second it hit my stomach I knew that it was not going to work. I ran into my parent’s bedroom and woke them up by telling them through clenched jaws that I was going to throw up. My mother sat up in bed and literally said, “No you’re not!” after which I spewed pink all over the hardwood floor. Another pleasant fact I found out, that when you throw up your jaws reflexively open irregardless of what you want them to do and of the fact that they might be wired together. I do not think that I will ever have the words to describe how painful that was.

We went to the emergency room and I got a shot for the nausea and I cried. I was so tired and in so much pain I just wanted it to end. My parents told me later that they had talked to the doctor about getting the wires clipped that night that would have possibly compromised the recovery but if I threw up again I would not have to wires affecting the nerves in my jaw. God somehow got me through that night and I went the full term on having my jaws wired together and was so happy when they were cut out of my mouth. I spent the next few years recovering and preparing to get fit with dentures to make up for the loss of teeth that I had been dealing with since birth.

During the spring of my senior year in high school I had the two fang-like canine teeth ground down to appear more normal. I had grooves cut into all of the teeth that I did have and to these were affixed precision fit dentures. For the first time in my life I had a full smile. I made a crack about being a senior and having to deal with all the things that seniors deal with like thinning hair and dentures. I felt for the first time in my life that things were starting to turn around for me. God could have stopped there and I would have been completely satisfied but God wanted me to have life and to have it more abundantly. Getting dentures was just the tip of the iceberg for what God had planned for me and what he would ultimately reveal to me. I still had a long way to go and a lot to learn.

During my sophomore year in college I was going back for more surgery. Over the winter break I had part of my hip removed and graphed into my face along with sea coral to build up my cheekbones. In response to this my friends from college had a tee shirt made for me that read, “My Face is Very Hip Now!” Along with the hip surgery I had a complete nose job to correct the nasal deformity. I honestly looked worse than I felt. My eyes had been blackened by the trauma that had been caused to my face from the surgery. It was nowhere near as bad as the jaw surgery had been and I recovered faster than had originally been expected.

I look back at some of the lowest points in my life and I see God holding me up. He was always there even at times when I had turned from him. I think it’s one of the reasons why Footprints in the Sand resonates with me. When I was younger I would ask God why me? Why would you curse me with this affliction? This affliction that makes my life so difficult at times and that set me apart from the other kids I grew up with? Why God? I never expected an answer but I got one. A year after the nose and hip surgery I got a job working for Community Mental Health. I was hired on to work in a house with lower functioning individuals who could not care for themselves. Someone at the administrative offices noticed that I was a student at Michigan State University going for a degree in psychology. I had already been hired but was called in for another interview for a different job. After the interview I was offered a job working with a higher functioning population. It was a dually diagnosed population, which means that they had physical ailments as well as mental illness. The majority of people I would be dealing with had Schizophrenia in one form or another. It was an incredibly humbling experience. Many of the people I worked with had come from successful lives and had lost them to their illnesses. They had been on medications that left them with horrible side effects faces frozen in grimaces, nervous ticks or stuttering. As if that was not enough they would go out on outings and people would stare, point and laugh or tease them. It really helped to put things into perspective for me.

My condition was not an affliction, as I had believed up until that point, it was a blessing. God had blessed me when he brought me into this world with Ectodermal Dysplasia. I was able to use what I had been through to empathize with and help out a group of people who society had thrown away. To help them to see and realize that God has a plan for all of us and that we have a tendency to see the challenges in our lives and not the blessings underneath them. Had God not made me this way I know that I would not have been in the position I was to help them and at the same time to help myself. I came to realize that I was more mature and more compassionate as a result of the struggles in my life and that brought me even closer to God.

I pretty much thought that after that God was done working in my life. I would come to find out however that it was only the beginning and that the best was yet to be. How is God working in your life?