The Sandwich Board

continued

But what if we don't possess it? What if, like me, a person is not instinctively outgoing? I don't have the unconscious generosity of my father. John's undiscriminating goodwill toward everyone he meets. How can I accept the gift of heaven, unequipped to live there?

It was to Joe Bishop, that most loving man, that I took this question. In his study at the Presbyterian church he pastored in Rye, New York, I confessed my lifelong pattern of pulling away from people. When I wanted a break from the typewriter, I told him, I'd head off on my own. Drive to a bird sanctuary. Go to a museum.

"I don't ask anyone else along. Just do my own selfish thing." What puzzled me, I went on, was that I had friends I loved doing things with. Why did I need to be by myself when I could have a great time with others and give them pleasure too? "I've tried and tried to change, but I can't seem to."

"And why," asked Joe, "do you want to change?"

Well, because ... wasn't it obvious? "It's not loving! Look at John. Look at you."

"But we're looking at you, Tib. Do you think when God created you, he meant to make someone else?"

Joe had known me for many years, he reminded me. "I observed long ago that solitude is as necessary for you, Tib, as food and drink. Why not thank God for feeding you in this way?"

The withdrawing, the closed door that I'd struggled against all my life, was ... okay? God-given, in fact? It was one of those heaven­tinged moments when in the mirror of someone else's eyes we catch sight of a better self than we knew:

I was in fact, Joe insisted, a profound lover of people-"in your way, not John's or mine." Me? Whose self-image was of a standoffish person - I cared deeply for others?

Like Dad Sherrill seeing a beauty that came from himself, Joe's portrait of me, I suspect, was largely a projection of his own nature. But that too is a hint of heaven! Perhaps God too sees us through the lens of his character, not ours.

I knew only, that day as I left Joe's study, that I was holding one of the keys to the kingdom of heaven. The lock does not open to prayer or good deeds or any other effort of our own.

The key is self-acceptance.

I can accept myself - delight in myself - because I am God's creation. It's a message I still have difficulty absorbing. Maybe its full impact must wait for the heaven that lies before us. But since that day in Joe's study, I've known that we cannot walk this Way at anyone else's pace, in anyone else's style, no matter how admirable. We can enter heaven only as ourselves.