Continuing form Something In Us, Elder Holland shared from his book ‘To My Friends:’
Such dwelling on past lives, including past mistakes, is just not right! It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is worse that Miniver Cheevy, and in some ways worse than Lot’s wife, because at least there he and she were only destroying themselves. In these cases of marriage and family and wards and apartments and neighborhoods, we can end up destroying so many, many others.
Perhaps as we contemplate moving forward in the future 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.”8 The proviso, of course, is that repentance has to be sincere, but when it is, and when honest effort is being made to progress, we are guilty of the greater sin if we keep remembering and recalling and rebashing someone with their earlier mistakes—and that someone might be ourselves. We can be so hard on ourselves, often much more so than with others!
Now, like Anti-Nephi-Lehies of the Book of Mormon, bury your weapons of war and leave them buried. Forgive, and do that which is harder to forgive: Forget. And when it comes to the mind again, forget 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 the 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. Such is the wonder of faith and repentance and the miracle of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the thing Lot’s wife didn’t get—and neither did Laman and Lemuel and a host of others in the scriptures.
I shared earlier a little verse remembered from one of my BYU English classes. May I move toward a close with a few lines from another favorite poet whom I probably met in that same class or one similar to it. Robert Browning wrote:
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to come,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand Who saith, “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”
~Jeffrey R. Holland, To My Friends (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2014) 242-48 Dwarsligger® edition
