Ouch! The Difficulty of Trusting

I've been suffering from exhaustion since our return from holiday, as has the Husband. So much so that we'd been wondering if we'd picked up some sort of virus that has made us incapable of staying awake much later than nine pm! Probably not though: I think in fact that wonderful as our vacation was, it was in no way restful, and that we succumbed to the temptation to fit too much in. So the price for that is a bone-deep weariness that refuses to budge.

It's been (and promises to continue being) a weird sort of week. Daughter #3 has had two of the four teeth removed in preparation for the application of the 'train-track' braces that will allegedly correct her rather eccentric dentition. She doesn't look like she has an 'overcrowded' mouth, but we are assured by the orthodontist that a few years down the line, if uncorrected, she will suffer from more teeth than mouth. But he would say that, wouldn't he? It's in his financial interests that children come to him to have their teeth straightened and aligned. Although he seems a reasonable and honest practitioner, every child under his care represents a big fat pay-check from the National Health Service (even more so, if we'd gone to him under his private incarnation). And there seems to be an element of fashion involved: almost every child in my daughter's year appears to sport a mouthful of metal. Braces were around when I was a young teenager, and indeed I wore them for a couple of years, but they were the sort fitted to a plate by our family dentist, rather than as the result of a drawn-out referral process.

So yesterday I had to sit and watch my child be...well....mutilated in the questionable quest for regularity. And it was horrible (though she was uncomplainingly and unflinchingly brave - bless her!) to see two perfectly white and healthy teeth being levered out of her jaw.....and the same will happen again this coming Friday. My toes were curling inside my shoes: it seemed so....wrong, and I seriously questioned why we were putting her through this ordeal.

But sometimes you have to defer to someone who knows better than you, even if you can't see the immediate need. If you put yourself in the hands of experts, you have to trust that they have gained expertise that is superior to your gut-feeling, or else there is no point in committing yourself to their care.

A similar situation has arisen with the Husband's sat-nav, which has me rolling my eyes. He decided that it would be a good idea to buy one as he often has to negotiate his way to distant offices and sites and is, by his own admission, not the best navigator, particularly when driving.

So a sat-nav seemed like a sensible option, and was bought, and installed. We decided to try it out on our way to the airport, but as soon as it gave my Husband an unexpected direction (turning off the motorway too soon), he had me looking at the road-map questioning the route it was taking us on. I told him what I thought was going on (two sides of a triangle rather than one) and he decided to press on until he thought he should turn off. And lo and behold! By remaining on what the Husband thought was the correct route we ran into road-works (that the sat-nav 'knew' about throught its live update facility) that lengthened our journey by more time than if we'd obediently trusted that sat-nav was right.

Have faith. Sometimes we aren't the experts we imagine we are!