Finding home at work

"As the months passed, I continued to pray, still feeling out of place."

By Jennell Lee Acha

In December 1998 I was told that my job would no longer be available to me. I could either go back to a position working on the equipment, or I could take a per diem assignment as a customer quality engineer until I finished my degree. There was truly no choice to be made. If I went back, I would be giving up on the work I had done to become a full-time engineer for the company. If I agreed to take the other assignment, I would have to work in another plant, where I knew no one, did not know the product line, and would have an entirely new set of customers and complaints. My fear of facing so much that was new was overwhelming. But after a lot of prayer and help from a Christian Science practitioner, I agreed to take the new assignment.

I slowly began moving my belongings from one plant to the other, but the joy I'd felt in my old job did not come with me. The fear stayed with me, and I felt resentment from new co-workers. I thought that they didn't want me as part of their team, and I didn't care to be a part of their group.

As the months passed, I continued to pray, still feeling out of place. The message came to me that it was not the job, the new boss, or the plant that had me so unsettled. It was my own way of thinking that needed to be corrected. I had been so wrapped up in the way we did things in the old plant and the way I wanted to handle things in the new plant, that I had criticized and condemned all those around me. I had let negative thoughts cover God's light. Once I realized this, I found direction in Mary Baker Eddy's words that it's wise to "square accounts with each passing hour" (Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 17). This meant to me that when a thought comes to mind that is not Godlike, it needs to be thrown out.

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SENTINEL OF OCTOBER 30