For several years now, I’ve had a nagging regret that I’ve been trying to push under the rug. Each time I think about this certain situation, I feel a deep sense of loss. Someone close to me did something unintentionally that is irreversible. I know it was not done with malice, and I’ve been apologized to many times. I’ve earnestly prayed to forgive this person.
Today, though, I was thinking about a line from a poem by Mary Baker Eddy, “Mother’s Evening Prayer”: “Wait, and love more for every hate, and fear / No ill,—since God is good, and loss is gain” (Poems, p. 4). As I considered the phrase “loss is gain,” I had a revelation, and it was like a ton of bricks lifted from my shoulders.
Over the years I have felt much sadness when thinking about what was lost and what could have been, but this morning I realized that I never could have lost any good in my life! The seeming loss was only in my thinking. I did not have to feel this way.
