Lot's Wife

Do you remember the story of Lot's wife in the Old Testament?  Lot and his wife and daughters were sent away from the city of Sodom and Gomorrah just before it was destroyed with the words, "Run for your lives!  Do not stop anywhere in the valley.  And don't look back . . . "  Lot and his two daughters followed their instructions, but Lot's wife couldn't do it.  She couldn't help herself.  As she was following along behind Lot, she looked back.  And it cost her everything.  In the days immediately after Steve's prostate cancer diagnosis, I spent a lot of time online learning as much as I could about the disease and the treatment options; on one of the websites, I came across this bit of advice: "When you are comfortable with a decision, once you have made it, don’t look back. Remember, you made the best decision you could make. There is no room for second guessing yourself."*  In the hard couple of days that followed, I thought of those words often and even offered them to Steve when he started worrying about decisions he had made and wondering if there was something he could have done in the past that would have prevented him from getting prostate cancer.  It was the "don't look back" part that made me think of the story of Lot's wife, of course.  But in her case, the words weren't just a bit of helpful advice, they were a heavenly command.  And if Lot's wife had heeded them, she would have been protected.  So this got me thinking: maybe the same is true for each one of us--whenever we are assailed by doubts over decisions we've made as carefully as we could, or when we are threatened by temptation or fear, we will be protected if we remember to look up, not back.

*http://prostatenet.com/page/userfiles/pdf/13215907386.pdf