Forgiveness and moving forward

I listened to a spectacular talk by Elder Holland today.  He used the example of Lot's wife.  She looked back instead of forward.  She looked back at a life she was supposed to leave and felt the tug and longed to be able to stay.  The future is God's.  When we move toward the future with faith, we progress.  When we look back, at past lifestyle and choices with longing, it is an act of faithlessness.  When we look back at past mistakes, progress and love decline:
"

At this point, let me pause and add a lesson

that applies both in your own life and also in

the lives of others. There is something in us,

at least in too many of us, that particularly

fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in

life—either mistakes we ourselves have made

or the mistakes of others. That is not good. It

is not Christian. It stands in terrible opposition

to the grandeur and majesty of the Atonement

of Christ. To be tied to earlier mistakes—our

own or other people’s—is the worst kind of

wallowing in the past from which we are called

to cease and desist...

When something is over and done with, when it has

been repented of as fully as it can be repented

of, when life has moved on as it should and a

lot of other wonderfully good things have happened

since then, it is not right to go back and

open up some ancient wound that the Son of

God Himself died trying to heal.

Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that

people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes!

Is that hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all, it

is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something

is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don’t keep

going back with your little sand pail and beach

shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then

throw it at someone, saying, “Hey! Do you

remember this?” Splat!

Well, guess what? That is probably going to

result in some ugly morsel being dug up out of

your landfill with the reply, “Yeah, I remember

it. Do you remember this?” Splat.

A nd soon enough everyone comes out of

that exchange dirty and muddy and unhappy

and hurt, when what God, our Father in

Heaven, pleads for is cleanliness and kindness

and happiness and healing.

Such dwelling on past lives, including past

mistakes, is just not right! It is not the gospel of

Jesus Christ. It is worse than Miniver Cheevy,

and in some ways worse than Lot’s wife,

because at least there he and she were only

destroying themselves...

there is no greater requirement for us than to

do as the Lord Himself said He does: “Behold,

he who has repented of his sins, the same is

forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no

more” (D&C 58:42)...

, like the Anti-Nephi-Lehies of the Book

of Mormon, bury your weapons of war, and

leave them buried. Forgive, and do that which

is harder than to forgive: Forget. And when it

comes to mind again, forget it again.

You can remember just enough to avoid

repeating the mistake, but then put the rest of

it all on the dung heap Paul spoke of to those

Philippians. Dismiss the destructive and keep

dismissing it until the beauty of the Atonement

of Christ has revealed to you your bright future

and the bright future of your family and your

friends and your neighbors. God doesn’t care

nearly as much about where you have been as

He does about where you are and, with His

help, where you are willing to go. That is the

thing Lot’s wife didn’t get—and neither did

Laman and Lemuel and a host of others in the

scriptures."

BYU Devotional January 2009