By Linda Tancs
A sermon once reflected on two kinds of loss: privative loss and negative loss. Privative loss relates to an absence, like a person or a career. Negative loss is grief over what wasn’t: the “if only” or the “I never got to.” We’ve all had our share of both losses, haven’t we? Sometimes, of course, they intersect: there’s grief over the loss of a person you wish you could’ve had a better relationship with. It’s complicated. Ask the Lord to help untie the knots.
