Dwelling on the past, on what you wished you had done, on what you wished would have happened, or what you wished you still had is time spent outside of the moment. It’s in the present moment where God’s grace abounds to us. He is not in the past. The past is an alternate reality that you’ve created to cope with sadness and loss; it only intensifies those painful feelings, though. It’s only in the present moment, here and now, where the pain is that God’s grace is sufficient for you.
The evil one will bombard our minds with thoughts of the past to keep us from experiencing Jesus in the present. His strategy is calculated and, often, goes under our radar. When we dwell on the past several things happen for example: our focus is taken off of Jesus, we lose sight of what we have because we are dwelling on what we’ve lost, and we forget to be grateful and then anger sets in. The evil one will do the very same thing with thoughts that produce anxiety and fear about the future.
Staying focused on Christ and depending on Him produces peace, even in times of great loss and pain. Paul’s encouragement to us from a Roman prison, “Brothers and sisters, I do not regard myself as having taken hold of it yet ; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead.” Philippians 3:13