Were you surprised?

Were you surprised when you saw me? It’s been, what, three, four years since we last saw each other, ‘in the flesh’ that is, Zoom doesn’t count. I think the last time was when you waved at me as I sped by on my mountain bike, spattered with mud from yet another foray into Epping Forest. (Our kids used to despair at the state Sally and I would be in when we got home from those winter rides and we literally had to hose the bikes, and each other, down). Were you surprised to discover that the only peddling I can manage these days is restricted to a pedal machine that I access from my riser/recliner chair. At least I don’t need to wear padded shorts anymore.

Were you surprised that I needed to hold onto your arm as we walked up the garden path for fear that the gusty wind would blow me over, or that our afternoon walk would be restricted to about 500 yards, with me forgetting to breathe because of the concentration required to successfully put one foot in front of the other?

Were you surprised that I had to wait to be served food onto my plate, rather than diving in, as was my wont, or that I had to lower my head to the table to eat as I can’t lift a fork to my mouth. It wasn’t very elegant, was it? Were you surprised to see that sometimes my muscles failed me mid-way through drinking a cup of tea and that I had to rest before I could lift the cup again? Were you surprised to see me struggle to lift a half-full bottle of milk from the fridge and get hopelessly trapped trying to put a jumper on?

How does your memory of me reconcile with what you saw in front of you? You said I hadn’t changed, but that is clearly not true – at least physically. It’s ironic really, the only thing I can do faster than you is to change, to grow physically older before your very eyes.

Maybe what you meant was that the real me, the essence of who I am, hasn’t changed. That what is important is the person inside this skeletal frame. That your vision wasn’t on my outward appearance, but rather on the ‘inner man’. Maybe in that moment you showed me a deeper truth.

I didn’t tell you, because it hadn’t happened then, but I had a picture come to mind the other day while I was at church. It was of a rather fine sandcastle I had built, on a flat rock, on the beach. As I looked the tide was washing the sand away and the sandcastle was ‘melting’ in front of my eyes. In that instance I recognised the sandcastle as being everything I had built up during my life, including my own body image and my perception of who I am, and it was incapable of resisting the sea. But there was a constant which wasn’t being eroded and that was the rock on which the sandcastle had been built. That rock was the God who loves me and who sent his Son to die for me.

This then is the essence of me, the core of who I am: a man with an unshakeable faith that I am loved by God, and that is all that matters. If that is what you saw when you said I haven’t changed, then I am glad. If, on the other hand, you were referring to my rugged good looks, then I am afraid you were lying.