Mouthguards & Broken Hearts

At night I wear a mouthguard. I also wear a CPAP mask, wax ear plugs, and an eye mask to block out any light that might try to break through. It’s like I’m going for total sensory deprivation which, in some ways, I might very well be. Either way, I’m sure this is a very special sight for my spouse. 😉 

The mouthguard has nothing to do with my sensory deprivation. In fact, it’s pretty new in my nighttime getup. It all started when I woke up one night in the middle of the night with excruciating jaw pain on my left side. I tried to take care of the pain on my own. I made an appointment with my dentist, but in the meantime was able to get in to see my primary care doctor. After describing the pain to her as an electric shock moving along my jaw on the right side of my face, and her doing a thorough exam, she diagnosed me with Trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder causing chronic pain. She prescribed a drug to use as needed, and encouraged me to keep the appointment with my dentist.

Soon, I was able to get in to see my dentist. At that appointment, my dentist was not at all surprised that I was dealing with the nerve disorder. She reminded me that when I first established care with her, she had noted (aloud to me and in my chart) that it appears that I might be a person who grinds her teeth. Teeth grinding, I have learned, is usually caused by stress, and can lead to broken teeth (I had cracked one), and can exacerbate the trigeminal nerve. To stop my teeth from grinding, my dentist fitted me for a custom mouthguard, instructed me to wear it every night, and to continue with the as needed pain medicine my doctor had described.

I’ve thought a lot about the ways in which my jaw being clenched and my teeth grinding have caused me great pain, and I’m mindful of all of the ways my heart, mind, and spirit have felt clamped down recently–each clenched and grinding in their own ways. And how, even when it feels like my heart is opening ever so slightly, something will happen that clamps it right back down again. Over and over. At every pass, the entirety of who I am clenches–from stress, from fear, from fatigue and worry. There are countless causes for each of us, I suppose, but the result is always the same.

From the closed-off place, it’s easy to “dress rehearse tragedy” or “borrow trouble.” It’s easy to leap to the worst case scenario on everything. That person who cut you off in traffic? Surely they were out to get you. The boss praising your co-worker? Certainly that means they think you're a terrible employee. The news story about some new terrible thing happening in politics? It’s the end of the world as we know it. There’s nothing good. There’s nothing positive. Not. One. Thing.

Psychologist Albert Ellis points to this as one of the three errors to human thinking:  “When something negative happens, we ignore all the positive that surrounds it.” Everything is “awful” and “terrible,” and there’s not one good thing happening at all. Clench and grind.

Now, I don’t think Ellis is suggesting that we all just need to realize the power of positive thinking to get through difficult times. I think he’s saying that the negative parts of life are true, but that is not ALL that is true. The only problem is that we are so closed down due to pain or worry or grief or fatigue, we close ourselves off to anything else–anything positive– reaching our heavy hearts.

A Sufi master once wrote, “God breaks the heart again and again and again…until it stays open.” It is this broken, wide-open heart,” Fr. Boyle writes, “that is able to fall into the immensity of the God of love.” In other words, instead of us grinding our teeth, or grinding at work, or grinding ourselves into the ground with worry, fear, stress, or something else, we find our true ground in God who is love. 

From this place, our hearts learn to open again beyond all that has clamped it shut, and we are mindful of what goodness or positivity remains around us. It’s not an easy thing to do–to get grounded and stay grounded. In fact, over and over again, we must be grounded again. Refreshed in God’s presence and the presence of God in us and the world around us–even when there’s a whole lot of awful begging us to clench and clamp our hearts, minds, and spirits to anything but more pain. 

There’s so much ugliness and uncertainty in our world right now, but do not be fooled, friends, that is not ALL there is. If you’re willing, God’s at work to break open your heart to the beauty and the goodness that’s here too–it’s always here too. 

Every moment is begging us to ground ourselves in the God of love in hopes that when we do, we will remember that it is from this love that we came, to this love that we ultimately return, and by this love that we are called to live. And when we clench our jaws, or our hearts, so tightly, we lose this ground and find that all that’s ground up in the process is us. 

No amount of clenching our jaws or grinding our teeth will get us through these difficult days. Only a supple heart–regularly broken open by God for the love of God will see us through. 

This week, may you be opened. May you be grounded.

Pr. Melissa

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