What can change in a couple of decades? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Today, Allie and I begin a trip back to Tennessee for my 20th high school reunion. Next week we will be moving to a new apartment complex in the area that’s cheaper and so since we won’t have internet access all week, I won’t be doing a blog next week. For now, let’s get into the thought of today.
It’s amazing to think back to what has changed in twenty years. Twenty years ago, I wasn’t sure where I would be going for college or if I would be going. I was wanting to do something in the world, but I didn’t know what it was.
Now here I am doing the Christian apologetics that I love so much. I didn’t even know about this when I was graduating from high school. Today, I have risen to some prominence in the field, especially with getting to debate Dan Barker not too long ago and having a podcast and a few ebooks on Amazon.
Let’s not forget one major change. I didn’t interact much with the ladies in high school. I had female friends, but I could have had a crush on someone and it would have never been known. I never even went to prom. At my 10th reunion, it saddened me that I was still single and had no real prospects. Little did I know that later in the year of my reunion that love would come along. Today, we are working on celebrating nine years.
I lived in Tennessee at the time of my graduation. Since then, I have lived in North Carolina as well and now I live in Georgia. Originally, I never would have seen myself leaving Tennessee at all. Now, it seems perfectly natural.
We also lived in a world where the internet was just starting out for us. Now everything is connected. Our reunion was pretty much put together in a kind of impromptu matter over Facebook. No one could have pictured something like that happening back in 1999.
Speaking of which, many of us will come with our phones and while when I was in high school I had a cell phone for my driving, now our phones do so much more. You can look and see an old flyer for a company like Radio Shack with equipment for sale that altogether costs a few thousand dollars. Now your phone can do all of it.
Yet it could be the personal growth that is most impressive. Allie has been doing a work in me getting to change many of my ways, something that my parents think indicate that she is a material worker. Much of my hesitancy to change is due to the Aspergers that I have, but it’s the love of my wife that motivates me so much to change.
I look forward to seeing all of my old friends again and to having Allie see them again. It’s also her chance to try to get any embarrassing stories about me in high school. (Although she had no problem believing I skipped lunch in high school to join my friends in the library and play Magic: The Gathering.) It will be good to see where everyone else has come from and while we all have differences in our stories, I hope we’re all twenty years wiser as well.
And who knows? Today might be a good chance for you readers to look back and see how things have changed in twenty years, some good and some bad changes to be sure. Think back on it and learn from the bad and appreciate the good.
In Christ,
Nick Peters