No matter what, don’t give up!

My new job as a dental aide could not have started any better: a good salary and a bright future. After a few months, the rosy horizon darkened. “You’re too slow and the colour of the patient’s teeth doesn’t come out as it should be,” my boss started telling me – at first once in a while, then almost daily. I couldn’t understand. Every morning when he distributed the jobs, he would almost ignore me and it seemed that he was always on the verge of firing me. In the evening when we reported after a hard day’s work, almost always I had to do everything all over again. I lived through days of inner tension and struggle. I felt tempted to rebel; judgements against by boss started piling up within me, but I kept trying “to cut” and “start again” each day.
One morning, I went to work under the pouring rain. The storm was like a picture of what I felt inside. Then I remembered the image of Jesus crucified which I have kept in my room for years; in those days I would gaze at it without getting a reply. I realized that I was like him when he cried out and then entrusted himself to the Father, believing in his love. And slowly, an idea made its way inside me: “Keep on loving, and no matter what, don’t give up!”
When I got to work, I tried to interiorize all the suggestions my boss had given me, setting aside the subtle mistrust which had been with me for months. I then regained the inner freedom I had lost.
A short time afterwards, my boss called me. He said he had just had a check-up with his eye doctor, who discovered that he had a defect in his vision. This was what caused him tension and altered his ability to distinguish colours. So that was the cause of our arguments! and of all the over-time work!
Some days later, during a conversation with him, he said among other things: “I’m getting close to retirement age. I thought of proposing that you take over my clinic, because I saw that in the face of difficulty, you don’t give up.”

F. L.