04/12/2026
The Dental Chair and the Door That Keeps Opening
There is something quietly sacred about a relationship that picks up exactly where it left off — even after six months of silence.
My dentist and I have one of those.
We don’t talk every day. We don’t text. We don’t follow each other’s lives in real time. But twice a year, I sit in that chair, and without fail, something opens between us that most people never find in relationships they tend to daily.
It started a few years ago, around the time I was moving through my own spiritual awakening. I don’t even remember exactly how it came up the first time. But I remember the feeling — that particular quality of recognition when you realize the person in front of you is also paying attention to something most people aren’t willing to look at. Since then, every visit has carried that current. I’ll bring something. He’ll confirm something. Or he’ll bring something, and I’ll find myself saying yes, and — like we’re mid-conversation even though we just said hello.
This visit was no different. We found ourselves talking about visitation. About entities. About the things that exist at the edges of what our human minds can fully hold — the experiences that are real, that people have, that don’t fit neatly into the frameworks we’ve been handed.
And then he got quiet for a moment.
He told me he can’t talk about these things with most people in his life. Not even some of the closest ones. That he’ll start to share something — a thought, a feeling, an experience — and before he can finish the sentence, someone will stop him. Not with curiosity. Not with a question. But with a declaration.
I’m a Christian.
Said like a door closing. Said like a warning. Said like those three words are supposed to end the conversation rather than deepen it.
I sat with that for a moment, because I know that feeling. I know what it costs to carry something true inside you and have no safe place to put it down.
And I thought — this is the loneliness that nobody talks about. Not the loneliness of having no one around you. The loneliness of being surrounded by people who love you and still having nowhere to take the fullness of who you are becoming.
So we kept talking. And what unfolded between us is still settling in me — about faith, about Jesus, about what it actually means to be a Christian when you’re willing to ask the question honestly.
I’ll share that part next.
But for now, I just want to name something for anyone who has ever been in that chair — metaphorically speaking. Anyone who has swallowed a sentence because they didn’t know if the room was safe. Anyone who has learned to edit themselves around the people who love them most.
You are not alone in that. And the questions you’re carrying are not a betrayal of your faith.
They might be the most faithful thing about you.
There is something quietly sacred about a relationship that picks up exactly where it left off — even after six months of silence. My dentist and I have one of those. We don’t talk every day. We don’t text. We don’t follow each other’s lives in real time. But twice a year, I sit in that ch...
