Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it. – Luke 17:32-33
There’s a rock formation standing near the Dead Sea that is said to be the remnants of Lot’s wife after she was turned into a pillar of salt as their family left Sodom and Gomorrah. The reason? Because God told them to leave and not look back, but she looked back.
The context of this in Luke is that Jesus is telling the people that when He comes back, you don’t need to be worried about going to get your bag or call for your family or anything else. When He shows up, we are to go with Him and NOT LOOK BACK.
This applies in our lives, too. It’s so easy to spend our whole life looking back at a trauma, looking back at “the good old days,” looking back the decision we made that changed our life for the worse, but God has told us DON’T LOOK BACK.
The things that have happened to us in our lives, the people we’ve loved and lost, the hopes and dreams that we’ve nurtured and grown and maybe achieved or maybe fallen short of — they’re there to shape us, but once they’re gone, they’re nothing but teaching points. There’s nothing you can do to get that moment back, and to dwell on it too much is getting awfully close to idolatry.
Let God lead you into the places you’re meant to be, and let Him take you out of that darkness behind you. Remember the words in Isaiah 43:18-19:
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.”
Don’t look back. That’s not where your future is. If you stop to look back, you may be stuck in that place for all eternity, just like the rock that is said to be Lot’s wife. 
