Boom. Salt.
“What’s her name?”
We don’t know her name. We know almost nothing about her. She’s called Lot’s Wife. I’m going to call her LW.
Does her name matter?
Nope.
What matters is that while hesitant to leave and reluctantly running from the burning of Sodom and her mud-brick home with Lot and their daughters, LW looked back, and became a pillar of salt.
“Hey, I wonder if I packed my favorite photo of Lot and the girls and that new perfume from Gomorrah, even though two angels warned me, ‘what happens in Sodom, stays in Sodom…now run!’, and held my hand while we ran from the fires!”
I understand. Moving to a cave in Zoar is a bit depressing. I may have looked back too, except if two angels warned me not to lest we be swept away.
I know, angels are warriors, shut the lions’ mouths, and don’t tend to speak to me or hold my hand often either so I am not sure what LW was thinking. What did LW think would happen? Sin City might not be overthrown, might not burn? Was she afraid of what was ahead of her? If nothing else, it is obvious that she didn’t trust the angels’ warning.
It is interesting that in the Bible salt is a metaphor for no man’s land, a desolate land, a land in which nothing grows (here, here, here).
LW = pillar of salt = a place where nothing grows.
I find myself contemplating this notion of a place where nothing grows, the fallow field, the weedy, untended garden, or a case of chosen indifference. There is no life. When we constantly look back at what was to shape today’s decisions we aren’t necessarily growing. There’s no choice there. It’s a “should of” instead of a “could have”.
Simply, I feel that is a place of fear. The opposite of love.
Love softens you. Fear hardens you. Into a pillar of salt.
I am not suggesting that we make cavalier decisions in the present without consideration of the past; however, we may and should consider the past, but not be immobilized by or stuck in the past.
In C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters,” Uncle Screwtape reminds Wormwood, his nephew, that, “—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows…”[1]
Looking back, you could surmise that tragic nostalgia such that LW had for Sodom or past wounds do not auger well for the present or future. Why do we neglect to savor the small, everyday positive moments that have a significant effect on happiness, resilience, well-being, and overall life satisfaction?[2]
The past appears to be a frozen tundra of nothingness or burnt to the ground. Yet we make decisions all day long based on looking back to past experiences ostensibly to help us make the next step.
The Marginalian author Maria Popova writes, “As creatures made of time, we live in the present and the past and the future all at once, continually shaken by all the fears and hopes, all the anxieties and anticipations, that are the price we pay for our majestic hippocampus — that crowning glory of a consciousness capable of referencing its memories and experiences in the past, capable of projecting its goals and desire into the future, capable of the bleakest despair and of the brightest dreams… But if we are lucky enough, if we are stubborn enough, we love and we lose and then the loss opens us up to more love — different love, because each love is unrepeatable and irreplaceable — on the other side of grief; love unimaginable from the barren landmass of loss, love without which, once found, the world comes to feel unimaginable.”[3]
Sometimes, we do become a pillar of salt when a novel situation presents itself, a new role on our team, a retirement from our competitive sport, a fresh person enters our life, an innovative career opportunity. We freeze. We cease to trust. However trite, “No one likes change,” is the devil we know so if we continue to look back at our timeline, base our decisions on how we were hurt, then perhaps, maybe, we won’t be tortured or fearful again.
Like all of our unexpected brushes with upset, we brace against the impact we imagine might happen if we trust again, open up again, love again. The recent experience propels us into unfamiliar territory, where we could be hurt again, slandered again, disrespected again, lied to again, and we project the old scenario onto the new one. We have fear.
Fear can ruin a person's life. Think of the person, who is so afraid, that she restricts her entire life to living at home, never trusting anyone or anything. She’s out of sync with her welfare, which is a compassionate consideration of her future well-being. It is essential to be able to take calculated risks or efforts like going outside, exercising, eating well, having relationships, loving someone unconditionally, raising children, or making decisions for your future welfare. She cannot, however, be forced. She cannot judge herself for this fear.
“I must not fear.Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
These words from Dune bring courage to the front. They push out everything else.
“So, what do I do now? I can’t look back. Salt ain’t my gig.”
We pause. This is what Steve Harvey calls the Turn Back moment, “We have a moment when we can go forward or we can give up. You have to keep in mind before you decide, is that if you give up, it is guaranteed that it will never happen. That’s the guarantee of quitting. The only way that possibility remains that it can happen is if you never give up, no matter what. Because God is always coming. He is never too late. Faith is everything.”
If I keep thinking the same things, I will stay in the same place. That is not a choice, that’s a loop in anger, shame, fear, sadness, guilt.
That is giving up.
But, if we can pause and find where that pain lives in us, that fear. We have a choice. You can’t see fear and be fear at the same time.
Talk to it: “I see you fear!”
Feel it. Where is it in your body? Remember your wholeness, that you are not separated from God.
Go to your journal and write about it for 5-minutes straight.
Get it out and feel it.
Discharge it.
Move it through you. “I am afraid of”, “This scares me”, “I fear”.
Where is this fear coming from?
What am I going to do with this fear?
What is this fear trying to teach me?
Choice.
Now we’re talking.
When we have access to choice, we have power. We change the ‘shoulds’ to ‘coulds’.
“Awww, dang it, I shouldn’t have looked back,” LW lamented as her limbs petrified.
She could have looked ahead instead.
[1] Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters,” letter 15, 1942
[2] Bryant, 2003; Quoidbach et al., 2010
[3] Popov, “Losing Love, Finding Love, and Living with the Fragility of it All,” The Marginalian newsletter
[4] Herbert, “Dune,” 1965
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