"Understated elegance, suggesting great wealth" . . . those words explicitly described the box I now held in my mind's eye. The gold foil paper wrappings, the slim silver ribbon tied with its single bow, intrigued me though seen only in my imagination. What treasure was hidden in this newest gift of my inheritance?
     Carefully, I removed the paper, untied the ribbon and, even before I discovered the contents of this box, I caught a breath-taking whiff of familiar perfume. I wished that the fragrant scented bouquet rising from the gift would stay and envelope me forever.
  I had inherited, in the den of my parents' house that sad, yet most unforgettable day, the gift of acceptance. Its heady aroma had announced its substantial eternal value. Actually, it wasn't just one gift or two, but three, all wrapped up in one word: acceptance . . . all mine to claim, mine to use and mine to pass on to my children and others.
     Eagerly I reached down into the folds of the flower scented tissue paper and lifted out the first of the three gifts of acceptance. It was not by mere chance that the gift on top was rather clearly labeled "Acceptance of God." How like my mother's thinking to prioritize the gift of acceptance in this sequence.
     Much of the legacy we leave behind to our children is determined by our heart's desire for them. When it came to my mother's longings and heart's desires for her children, the dreams and aspirations she held for us contained a multitude of arenas and included the full scope of life's encounters.
     Since my children are grown and I now have the luxury of hindsight, I've come to appreciate my precious mother and the inheritance she left me. I think she was a genius in understanding the true mystique and character of mother-hood. It's obvious that she chose the path in the role of a mother prayerfully and carefully. Clearly, she chose to avoid being a pushy "stage mother," fixing things, manipulating people and trying to control situations for her children. At the same time, she did not take a hands-off approach or hold herself aloof from us. We knew mother stood firmly, one thousand percent for us, cheering and urging us towards our goals. Additionally we knew, and I've not checked this out with my siblings, but we always understood that mother's highest and most pressing spiritual desire for us was that we would accept and invite the presence of God to live within us. She wanted every one, especially her children, to know and love God in a most personal way.
     So, I understood that if she'd left me the gift of' acceptance, she'd start with God-but I thought it went without saying, that I'd already "accepted God."
     I'd become a "Christian" when I'd consciously and deliberately chosen to accept God's rich gift of eternal life. Mother, of all people, knew what a glorious difference this acceptance of Christ had made in my life's directions. Certainly she'd known and watched my stumbling ways along with occasional progress. So, why leave me the gift of acceptance, starting with my choosing to accept God? For a moment I thought, Well, she probably wanted to re-emphasize the old truth about salvation being a gift from God, but that the gift would do no good unless we accepted it. After all, what good is a gift if the person you are offering it to refuses it?
     But, hey, my mother knew that my choice of becoming a child of God had changed my life inside and out for time present and for eternity. So, what was her point? Perhaps she realized, long before I did, how we tend to think of  "accepting Christ into our hearts" as the one hundred year old Evangelical term puts it, as strictly that - accepting Christ. Period. When in reality it is much more. Much more.
     As I contemplated these thoughts, I could hear mother,

Joyce-Honey, accepting Christ into your heart and life does take precedence over other types of acceptance, that's why it's first here - but don't stop with accepting God . . . there's more, much more! Push on, honey, expand your mind and your soul . . .

     Even today, as I sit here writing and pondering that first gift on top of two others in the acceptance box, I recall how many times I've walked myself through this labyrinth of rationality. I've said, "Oh, yes, I've accepted God and he has forgiven me." But, then I've added the familiar words, "Yet, I can't seem to forgive myself."  In the years I've been counseling, in person and through the mail, this is one of the most prevalent thought patterns I've heard verbalized.
     We seem to be capable of handling and accepting the theory of God's forgiveness towards us. But we can't quite get it through our heads that when he provides forgiveness, he sees us as forgiven. We continue to refuse to forgive ourselves and do as Martha Snells Nicholson's line reads, "I made a whip of my remembered sins . . ."  Why is it so hard to accept God's viewpoint of ourselves?
     Ephesians 1:4 gives us the very best of concepts as to how God sees us. Do we just read these precious words, nod our heads in "doctrinal" agreement, but refuse to believe the truth - even when it's before us?
 

Long ago, even before he made the world, God chose us to be his very own, through what Christ would do for us; he decided then to make us holy in his eyes, without a single fault - we who stand before him covered with his love (TLB).
 

     This verse is the essence of what my mother wanted me to understand about accepting God. It was a pivotal and critical concept in the acceptance gift she left. Simply put, I was to accept the way God sees me. Mother did indeed know I'd accepted Christ. Now she wanted me to grow in a different direction. I was to accept God's viewpoint and his picture of me. I was not to look through my own screen or the lenses of others . . . I was to look at myself through the eyes of God, seeing me as he sees me.
     Think of it! When we ask God to come and live within us, he does. Graciously and mercifully he forgives our sins. Then, as Ephesians 1:4 describes the moment, we stand before God. We stand naked, as it were, for he has seen in, through, and past our being. He knows all our secrets and the frailty of our frame. But, there we stand - a new child of God, "covered with his love."  One translation says of that same moment, ". . . that we might be holy and blameless in his sight, living in the spirit of love" (TCNT).
     How dare we accept God as our Savior, accept his forgiveness, and then refuse to see ourselves as he sees us thus refusing to forgive ourselves? If God decided to make us "holy and blameless" in his sight, by forgiving us - then we need to accept his opinion of us, as his children, and see ourselves as forgiven by him. How foolish we must appear - when one second we open wide the door of our hearts to God, ask him in, and them immediately slam it shut on our own personal forgiveness. It's the ultimate insult to God. It's saying to him, "Theologically speaking, I accept you; but actually there must be a loophole or two in your promise of forgiveness." No wonder acceptance of God was on the top of the stacked gifts in this box of my inheritance!
     I've been thinking about how many times, over the years, I have refused to accept God's perceptions and appraisals of Joyce. How many times have I stubbornly clung to the false notion that I am in charge of my forgiveness? How often have I donned pride's invisible cloak and minimized the value of Christ's gift by announcing, "I cannot forgive or forget my sins . . . I can't forgive myself?"
     My sagacious mother wanted me to know, while she was here and after she was gone, that I could trust God's forgiveness even to the ultimate point of self-forgiveness; that if I did forgive myself, I'd be able to run the race with a clear, confident conscience, and my feet would be free from the muddy guilt of remembered sins. She wanted me to know and to believe that I am God's child, and that he's forgiven me. I could hear her ask, "Joyce-Honey, tell me, assured of God's forgiveness - what more do you need to run the race set before you?"
     A few months after my father's death, in 1987, my darling step-mother, Elizabeth, discovered a wonderful prize. She found some recorded tapes of my mother's Bible studies from 1963. On me tape, Mother was teaching a lesson on this very issue and was asking, "What do we do about forgiving ourselves and putting the past to rest?"   Beautifully, yet simply she says, 
 

Put yesterday where it belongs ... in the past. Release yourself from its mortgaging grip. Repeat often to yourself the verse of Hebrews 10:17, when God assures us about yesterday's sins: "And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." 

     In other words, when I am tempted to say, "Yes, but I can't forgive myself because, you see, I know me and what I've done," then I am to repeat Hebrews 10:17 and accept God's statement that he has forgiven and forgotten the sins and the failures of my yesterdays. Only when I forgive myself, and feel the freedom of that forgiveness, can I move on. It sounds easy to do and, in a way, it is - but nevertheless, forgiving myself still takes an act of my will.
     Today I've savored the fragrant gift of the acceptance of God's forgiveness and his perception of me. There is a deep settled peace hovering around my soul each time I remember that he can't remember my sins. Nor will he hold them against me; and, while I don't have God's ability to forget, still - nowhere is it written that I have to hold those sins against myself, especially since our heavenly father doesn't. My mother's words, "Release yourself from yesterday's mortgaging grip," peal like angel bells in my heart and lift me to a higher plateau of understanding and, certainly, facilitate the healing of my memories.
     I was eager now to see what the other gifts of acceptance would bring to my ever-growing stockpile of the legacy I'd inherited.  Precipitously, and erroneously, I assumed that if my accepting God and his view of me was the top gift in the box, then surely accepting others was the very next one.  Right?
     Wrong.
     The middle gift was not the important gift of accepting others but the seldom used gift of accepting myself.
     I smiled, remembering my mother's gift of honesty, and thought, I should have known.  Accepting others is not next...for one simple reason.  Accepting myself has to happen first.  I had to accept God and his forgiveness before I could accept myself.  And I must accept myself before I can move on to accepting others...    

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