you know youre getting old when...

1. People who come to your Christmas soiree (and who are younger than you) bring their kids

2. You've been out of school (and yes its a pretty awful website) so long that the 'class of 96' has their 10 year reunion.

After almost getting the wrong night (another sign of getting old - or just not reading things properly), I rolled up to White's Tavern last night intrigued as to what would ensue. To be honest I had feared it may be just a chance for people to let everyone know how successful they were, or that after the 'so where are you living now?' and 'what are you up to?' questions were exhausted it would descend into an awkward silence. I'm glad to say it was a good night - some people i hadn't seen for 10 years, others I had. Its strange that most people outwardly didn't seem to have changed that much (well, most of the guys have acquired a bit of later twenties spread) and some of those relationships were pretty easy to pick up again. Be interesting to know how much people really have changed. I know as I look back my time at uni was very significant and shaped a lot of who I am now. The shy geeky Samuel with the sideshade of 1M has become the slightly more opinionated (and still geeky) Sam who thankfully has lost the sideshade! I guess my last 10 years have been shaped by realising that if I believed God was real then I needed to take him seriously. That has meant launching into the journey of following Jesus and trying to figure out what it looks like to follow him. That's taken in rebellion against the nice easy answer tickbox Christianity I grew up with, trips to Africa and South America have pushed me deeper into understanding how God and justice fit together, its taken me through some tough times of various sorts of broken relationships, and the more recent strand of trying to understand better who God has made me to be so I can figure out how best I can be part of what He is doing. Looking back the last 10 years have been pretty exciting, God has been doing a lot of work on me, bring on the next 10!