Looking back is one of the preconditions for gratitude—gratitude to God and gratitude towards one another. However, looking back with a morbid regret and sense of shame that excludes forgiving oneself as well as accepting God’s forgiveness, traps us in the past and like Lot’s wife, looking back renders us powerless to move forward. Aware of this danger, Saint Paul assured the Philippians: One thing I do is forgetting what is behind, I strain to what is ahead. And so, let us be on guard against this self-defeating kind of “looking back,” which can pose as compunction and sorrow for sin, but can actually be a prideful unwillingness to humbly and contritely open one’s heart to the healing mercy and forgiveness of God—a forgiveness that we look back upon with loving gratitude and wonder.