In my last post, I was pondering, How to grow a family culture? I'm finding that it can't be forced. It can likely only be modeled. And that I have to first attend to my own internal "culture" or garden and "Guard [my] heart. It is the wellspring of life."

Well, I'm a kid at heart, the youngest of 2 brothers and 5 step-brothers (and 10 uncles), and I always wanted to play. My husband calls me "The perpetual college student" who worked with grad students for years, in part because I could easily find a game of volleyball or Ultimate Frisbee. (Granted, I also want to help save the world along with people like grad students but that's a bit heavy for this post).

The problem is that once I hit my late 30's, I stopped playing very much. With a mortgage, an aging car, marriage and five kids, well, I started to act and sound like a grown-up. Even to feel like one at times. A lifelong bird, I finally became a tree. But a "Giving Tree" (great book) who too often was a grump.

Now, I'm not at all against adulthood so long as it is not by definition a bummer.

I mean both a bummer for yourself, and for those with whom you live. In fact, the world needs more adults who define love not in emotional terms but in terms of action on behalf of the best spiritual and physical interest of others. Those are rare indeed. (I recommend Scott Peck's "The Road Less Travelled.")

But responsibilities were, for me, more like choking thorns. "It's not fair," I told my lifelong friend, Susan (with nine kids). She replied, "Fair? You gave up 'fair' at the foot of the cross, remember? Since when do dead people talk about 'fair'?" I thought to myself, "I think I need a new best friend. One who will affirm my exhaustion and sense of unfairness."

But this summer I'm trying something -- obeying God about playing and Sabbath and trusting Him for the cares of the world. I'm not working much less, but I am playing more -- and realizing in the process that I love my work as well. It's the balance I was missing.

It's hard to feel sorry for one's self when on a tennis team, having sailed, played front yard football, and been to a few barbeques. With hopes of hiking in North Carolina before long.

This April, after 4 months and 12 work trips around the country and Europe, during which I really miss home, I dropped a colleague off at the Orlando airport and went to return the rental car before catching my own flight. The thing is, I just kept driving -- past the rental drop-off, past the airport. I called home and when David heard my voice he said, "I don't think you should get on a plane. I've never heard you so exhausted. Why don't you stay and play for a few days." So I kept driving -- to beaches where I looked for shells, to Lakeland for an evening of the revival there which is quite something.

Best of all I ended up at a Disney resort where I waited my turn with 4- and 5-year olds on the waterslide. At first I pretended to be one of the watching parents, but then I started sliding. One little girl, Hannah, asked if I wanted to go with her. I did. Then, she said I could go first. Then, she went first. Then, we went down holding hands. We laughed a lot. For a good 20-minutes I felt like a 4-year old again. With nothing to think about but sliding down a water slide into a what looked like a fiberglass African lagoon. I think she may have been an angel. If not, a saint. Better yet, a child.

Maybe God is in fact more interested in loving us than in "using" us, but of course the two are related -- since he loves us he includes us in the work and play of the Kingdom, as an honor. It's all good.

Trusting the Lord of the Sabbath, of every need, and of my heart. I think it's working.