Remember Lot's Wife

Tonight I spent a significant amount of time going through my gmail inbox. For some reason I feel a compulsion to keep it organized and clean. I cannot understand people who log in and have 487 unread emails. I could never do that. My inbox is a record of my life. One of the only records, and rather thorough at that.

As I was going through old emails, I felt transported back in time. I've been doing this spring cleaning in chapters. First cleaning out and sorting emails from Winter Semester- Marie Cornwall's Sociology class, Jenet Jacob's research, family advocacy, Stats 706, Tom Holman's class, labeling all the classes and papers and attachments. Then back through last fall, thinking about Alan and meta-analysis, the Dean Machine's torture chambers, and Jason Carroll, the newness of grad school and the beginnings of Fidelio.

Today I returned to the time before BYU- and leaving Alaska. This is a chapter I've left untouched for quite some time. It's been almost a year now since I left Alaska, and a year since some significant events happened in my life. I traveled backward, and mostly traced my life through the threads of conversations with Shug, David Smith, and Zach, all dear dear soul mates.

The more I archived, the more I began opening old emails from old relationships: love letters, emotional emails, working through things, all the way to the young and star-struck beginning of our relationship. It seemed like that relationship was the world. That it would last forever. That his love defined who I was and the purpose for my life. And that I would spend eternity with him. That was the plan anyway. It changed me deeply. And when it was gone, I mourned deeply. I felt like I was going to die. For 9 months the darkest despair drained light, life and happiness from me. I was overcome with sorrow. The despair was so real and intense that I have been afraid to revisit it. Tonight, secure in my little Provo bedroom, I walked that dangerous road.

It was amazing with what power the emotions and experiences flooded back to me, as if I were still right in the middle of it, or how I felt if I read for too long and wasn't careful, I would revert exactly back to that same spot. It was interesting to experience that gamut of a year of emotions all in a couple of hours. And I wanted to record some important lessons that I've realized I need to remember, and some things I need to forget.

First, tonight makes me think about how when we are in each chapter of our lives, particularly the difficult ones, we feel like they will last forever. They are so real and weighty and heavy. and those feelings are so real and weighty.

But the chapter of the book did close. And those hard times are past. And it's a part of me that transformed me and changed me. It didn't last forever. And although it feels like that at the time, that is a distortion that needs to be grounded. Because now, a year later, life moves on as if it's just a whisper of the past. And I survived. It is a miracle how I was rescued from the darkness of that time of my life. I will never cease to be amazed and grateful to the Lord for that deliverance.

I realized that I feel things unusually strongly. And quite suprisingly (though it should be no surprise) I realized that my emotions can be as misdirected as they are strong. I'm a drama queen! And while my emotions feel strong and powerful and real, I would greatly benefit from exercising discipline and tempering my passions. As Alma says, "Bridle your passions, that ye may feel love". I've seen such a clear pattern in my life that I become easily overcome by emotions. I need to not place my emotions as the god of my world, no matter how powerful and strong they may be. There is a difference between what feels good because it feeds my emotional cravings, and what is right because it pleases the Lord. I need to work on making the Lord the God of my world, and not my feelings or relationships.

Third, I think there can be learning that comes from remembering the past, but also prudence in not reliving or yearning for it.

Right after David and I broke up, I suffered what I thought was another unbearable tragedy- I lost my journal (handmade by my best friend) and my spiritual journal- two companions that had become my dear friends and confidants in a lonely time. I was so sad because I had become such a diligent writer. But I also would often re-read my account of my feelings about David and our relationship and not leave those sentiments behind. I felt soon after that it was providential to have those remembrances taken from me, to prevent the further torture I would have inflicted on myself by reading and rereading experiences that were no longer reality. I used my journal to escape from reality and live in the past instead of moving forward. I am grateful now that that account is gone. And might as well be the same with old emails. There's not much good in opening up old passages, emotions and memories that have been dealt with and put in the past. Rereading and re-experiencing those feelings can delay forward moving progress or at least cause distraction.

In essence, it's good to remember the deliverance, but yearn for the past. In Alma chapter chapter 5, Alma asks his people, "And now behold I say unto you that belong to the church, have you sufficiently retained in remembrance the captivity of your fathers? Yea, and have you sufficiently retained in remembrance his mercy and long suffering towards them? And moreover, have you sufficiently retained in remembrance that he has delivered their souls from hell?" (Alma 5:6).

In looking back on my life, I think that it is so important to remember those lessons of deliverance by the Lord, his long-suffering, and how without his mercy we could not be delivered from our own personal hell. In looking back on my Gethsemane experience after that relationshiop, most of all I want to remember that I was delivered. And redeemed from darkness, despair, depression and my own personal hell. The Lord rescued me, in a way as miraculous to me as the children of Isreal walking through the Red Sea. He parted the ocean seas in my life. And I will always always be grateful for his hand of mercy in that deliverance. I will always be astounded by the miracle that is my life now, compared to the despair that I suffered in just a year ago. It is truly beauty from ashes.

As Elder Holland says though of Lot's wife, often times there is a temptation to look back, not just to learn from the past, but to longingly and faithlessly wish or hope to return to what was, and disdain the path we are on. This is not only a great token of ingratitude, but damaging to our spirits and the progress we have made in the present and are committed to in the future. As Elder Holland expressed:

"So it isn't just that she looked
back; she looked back longingly. In short,
her attachment to the past outweighed
her confidence in the future.

I plead with you not to dwell
on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for
yesterday however good those yesterdays
may have been. The past is to be learned
from but not lived in. We look back to
claim the embers from glowing
experiences but not the ashes. And when
we have learned what we need to learn
and have brought with us the best that we
experienced, then we look ahead, we
remember that faith is always pointed
toward the future ‐‐ faith always has to do
with blessings and truths and events that
will yet be efficacious in our lives.

"This one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind,
and reaching forth unto those things
which are before, I press toward the mark
for the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13‐14).


Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but
never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that
God has great things in store for each of
us and that Christ is the "high priest of
good things to come."

I thank the Lord for such timely counsel from his apostles. So shall I press forward, remembering those lessons that bring me closer to Christ, and pressing forward in hope of Him who is the high priest of good things to come.