Don't Look Back

Don’t Look Back

Often in times in my life where I have encountered great change, or a negative event I stumble and trip myself up by looking back. I seem to want to process, to understand or to correct, when really there is nothing there worth my consideration. I am routinely not aware that I am doing it, and often have to have the lights knocked out of me in order to realize that what I have engaged in only serves to harm myself and to further impede my progress toward a better life. Generally, ruminating over past negative events is counterproductive and harmful to the whole person.  Also, looking back and longing for what is no longer ever going to be the natural order of things is inherently dangerous. 

I am sure by now a few of my readers will be chuckling, and one will be enjoying a belly buster. Fine then, that makes me a success. I would hope that one in particular might beam with pride that I finally get “it”.  It all brings to mind a time from my glory days, which, being a positive memory, I believe is profitable to dwell on.  I was practicing nursing on a neuroscience unit, new and fresh and immersed in what I was learning and doing each day. I was discussing negative current relational events with a lovely mentor nurse from India who embraced her own world of troubles and relational hurt  and simply stated: “Dear girl, when you put the garbage can on the corner each week, do you ever go outside and drag it back into the house again?”  It is wisdom I have never forgotten, and yet recently I realized that I never completely understood it. I immediately understood it to mean that of course you purge, eliminate or discard the “thing” or the “person” but I never realized until these past weeks that alongside that goes the rest of “it”.  Defining “it” , the waste, the damage, the hurt feelings and powerful assumptions made, all of these things should make it to the corner with the garbage.  There is no good thing to come from looking back.   I think it is the greatest paralyzer.  

These conclusions brought me a memory of a story from the Bible. It is the story of Lot and his family, who were living in Sodom and Gomorrah.  You can imagine by God’s perspective there was no good thing to come out of this entire city. I am sure the people living within its walls with no boundaries and with no limits could ever agree.  As the story goes, in simplest fashion there was by God’s perspective one good man in the city. One man worth the saving, a man called Lot, and by grace and command, his family was included in the one time offer for a ticket out of hellfire with just one irrevocable demand and command.  “Do NOT look back.”  One does not have to be a Bible scholar to realize that violating such a command would bring about an unlivable consequence.   It was not as if Lot did not prepare his family.  It was not as if as leader of his house he chose to leave out that information and leave it to chance . Lot was clear on the concept and clear in communicating it.  The line was drawn in the sand. Something bad is happening here, and it was time for this family to go.  From God’s perspective this must have been one of the greatest planned dramas in all of Bible history.  God had done it before with a flood, so it seems that Einstein’s definition of insanity may not apply here. One family was allowed out to head for the hills while the entire city locked down and imploded with great balls of fire to consume the sinners and scourge the land of their sin.  What a party town that must have been!   

So let us review the command. “DO NOT LOOK BACK.”  As it turns out, this is easier said than done for some.   Lot was the one good man chosen by God to be spared this horrible event, and since Lot was from a strong and vital bloodline, the bloodline that eventually leading to Jesus, it was imperative that he be spared to lead his children out of danger. 

Sodom and Gomorrah was burning. Fireballs were coming from the sky and Lot took the hand of his wife and commanded his children to follow him. They fled on foot towards the hills, all the while Lot reminding his beloved family of God’s one demand/command:   “DO NOT LOOK BACK.”

I always wondered what it was that compelled the woman to look back. Known infamously through the rest of history only as “Lot’s wife”, what happened next burned itself into the minds of every innocent Sunday school student in all of Christianity.  The common teaching is that she was simply a disobedient wife. Well, she was that.  I just wondered what made her do it.  Many people would argue that it might be Satan’s shot at trying to make the daughter look back, who God needed to continue the bloodline, others say that she was stuck to some behavior or relationship in the past. For whatever reason, probably a tangle of them, Lot’s wife stopped, and was compelled, and looked back.  The Biblical report is that she immediately turned into “a pillar of salt”.  Those that take things literally may see that as a pile of salt, or something like the picture here.

                                    

                                      

That is too pretty. It does not depict the self-destruction that happens as a result of looking back on the past against all better judgment and command.  Lot’s wife, harmed herself irreparably, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.  I do not think it makes sense to take this accounting literally. I think it makes better sense with more appropriate definitions.  I see Lot’s wife as having the need to stop and look back at a former life, one she liked, one she was happy in, and one she was attached to the relationships in. Lot’s wife did not realize that looking back on what was taken from her would be her undoing. I read where the Phoenicians used the phrase “pillar of salt” to define paralysis, as a physical one, being unable to move, as in a stroke or spinal cord injury. All we know is that she died unable to move and unable to participate in real living. She became someone benign, dead or not dead, it clearly never mattered. The lesson for me is that life can end as a result of looking back. It can stick you in a place, paralyzed and useless for living.  If the same God had intended for us to look back as a habit, our heads would turn all the way around and our eyes would not have peripheral limits. The limits are there for a reason, and heads and eyes are meant to face forward.

A dear friend of mine taught me recently and passionately that the past is never in the equation of real living. When we travel in any direction, the road signs always tell us how far we are from the place we are going, not how much ground we have covered since the place we left.                         

                               

Does knowing this make me NEVER want to look back? It is certainly compelling.  What I do know is that there is real consequence for doing it and the punishment is a loss of freedom.  I am not willing to accept or tolerate a fixed position at any point of my life so I just cannot look back again.  I will choose pillar of wellness over a pillar of salt any day. 

I am going to go out on a limb and say that looking back on the glory days and the good times can be very healthy. I was driving yesterday in unseasonably warm temperatures with the top down on my convertible, listening to music while soaking up the sunlight and much coveted Vitamin D.  I remembered the way the springtime felt in my younger days at the University of Rhode Island and all I could hear was music being blasted out an open dormitory window. The band was Boston and the song was:

Don’t Look Back

Don't look back
A new day is breakin'
It's been too long since I felt this way
I don't mind where I get taken
The road is callin'
Today is the day

I can see
It took so long just to realize
I'm much too strong
Not to compromise
Now I see what I am is holding me down
I'll turn it around, oh yes I will

I finally see the dawn arrivin'
I see beyond the road I'm drivin'

It's a bright horizon and I'm awakin' now
Oh I see myself in a brand new way
The sun is shinin'
The clouds are breakin'
'Cause I can't lose now, there's no game to play

I can tell
There's no more time left to criticize
I've seen what I could not recognize
Everthing in my life was leading me on
But I can be strong, oh yes i can

I finally see the dawn arrivin'
I see beyond the road I'm drivin'
Far away and left behind, left behind

Oh the sun is shinin' *and I wanna go*

Don't look back
A new day is breakin'
It's been too long since I felt this way
I don't mind where I get taken
The road is callin'
Today is the day

I can see
It took so long just to realize
I'm much too strong
Not to compromise
Now I see what I am is holding me down
I'll turn it around, oh yes I will

I finally see the dawn arriving
I see beyond the road I'm driving
Far away and left behind
Don't look back

I hope you enjoy the song as much as I always did and still do today. I carry with me the determination to avoid looking back on negative events  and to retain my focus on what is positive and important. For health and wellness, it is a vital and necessary change.

Resonant Partner