The appointment you kept dodging

Somewhere there's a dental office with your name in a file nobody's opened in a while. You rescheduled once for a real reason. Then once for a made up one. Then you stopped calling back. It was never the drill. It was the clipboard, and the little box you'd have to check or lie about.

The pattern ran bigger than teeth. The checkup. The blood test. The honest talk with someone who'd ask. You skipped each one because you already knew what you'd hear. Avoidance never shows up on a bill, but you paid it anyway. The cigarette made a toothache feel safer than a checkup.

Now that little box gets a different answer. Whatever they find, you're already dealing with it, and something you're fixing isn't something you're hiding from. God's already seen all of it, and He stayed. The visit shrinks back into a visit. Some scraping, some small talk, home. A boring checkup is a trophy.

Book it today, before you set your phone down. The dentist, or whichever appointment you've dodged the longest. Take whatever news comes, including the parts you'll need to fix. Ask for a little courage on the way in. Give me the nerve to be looked at. This time, the clipboard is the easy part.