Dear self...See you in a while.

In the past few weeks I have caught up with a few people who have been significant facets of my past (and some of which, my future, I hope). I am beginning to notice that there is a type of scientific, out of our control thing that goes on with relationships. Have you ever noticed that you act differently around different people? I don’t mean hypocritical or two-faced differences, just subtle aspects of your character that always exist but are sparked up or subdued when mixed with certain personalities.

Sometimes how we act is determined by the other having a particularly exuberant personality, or perhaps the opposite…but this can happen with any body, it is not particular to those from our pasts. The thing I find more interesting is that our personality traits (around said other)

can be liked to all the mini-details of life when you were friends. Perhaps it’s not all of life, perhaps its just particular circumstances that created a different set of traits in you for a time, either way, people act as little linkages to our pasts in a way powerful enough to make as act and feel as though we were there again.

Recently, a great friend from school returned from England where she has spent the last 10 months. We caught up for dinner. Allot has happened since I saw her last. I have a fiancé now, I work full time, I pay bills and buy groceries, I’m more level headed and go to bed much earlier, I’m interested in kitchen appliances and comparing broadband deals, I am less easily excited, less sarcastic and less worked up. I’ve changed a fair bit. However, from the moment we sat down for dinner my light hearted humour that got me through the last few years of high school returned to me, she was in stitches as she had been through many an art class or drama lesso

n. It was clear that there were parts of me that went to England and back and that only come out of the shadows when she is around to shine light on them.

I had a similar experience last Sunday when we visited uni church. Josh and I were standing around, joking as we usually do, meeting new people here and there, and then I suddenly spotted a boy, who 4 or 5 years ago would turn me silly in an instant. Unfortunately he happened to sit behind us in the service and for a little while (until Josh grabbed my hand and I remember who I was) I became the same self conscious, self absorbed girl I was when I knew him. To clarify, there is nothing about this boy that would or could make me go silly now, but he acted as a link to my 14 year old self in such a real way, it was fascinating.

So much of us (more for some than others I would imagine) is determined by those who surround us. Our humour, preferences, priorities, temptations are moulded and shaped by

those we spend time with. If our identity is in Christ, he has a perfect design for the unity of his people (You can see snippets of it in Ephesians 4, Psalm 133, Romans 15:1-13, Colossians 3:12-15). God, as our maker, knows what we are like, he knows how we absorb one another, our personalities thriving on and rebelling against aspects it sees in another. He has designed believers to exist with other believers. I am so thankful for those I get to absorb each day. Thankyou for your humour, preferences, priorities and temptations. Gods design is good.

HSC Drama with friend mentioned above