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If they could bottle youth and sell it we’d all be rich.

How many times have I heard that phrase from a weary mother wrangling her kids. A woman assigning worth to a stage of life by the straw lines around her puckered lips. A man who uses salt and pepper to describe the hair on his head instead of spices he uses to cook.

We’re all a little tired, a little more than spent. Some of us haven’t slept eight hours straight in years. Quiet, stillness, and thinking thoughts to completion is for the bored, not the board room, yes?

Not so much.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. (1 John 3:1a)

It turns out we’re already rich.

Maybe what we need more than the secret for staying young is to accept the gift of Sabbath when life becomes a blur.

How do we rest from adulting? We remember that we are children in God’s capable hands.

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Who said you have to fly from a string? You are free, walk around and laugh at convention. Slip off your shoes and feel the grass under your feet. Bend down and hunt for four leaf clover among leaf litter. What is the worst that can possibly happen?

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Why is it wrong to nap in the hammock instead of cleaning up the peanut butter and jelly smeared on the kitchen cabinets?

“I don’t do guilt,” I hear my mother-in-law say, so I wrote it down in the first chapter of my book.

Allow the laundry to remain in a heap and your car seats crumby. Look up, notice the elephant cloud floating against a blue canvas.

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Does a dragonfly tickle or sting? Show and tell. Let me see your finger.

Cup wind-wings in your hand and protect what God gave you. Cherish, protect, and relish your smallness. Release your gifts instead of holding them captive and what is yours will eventually come back to you.

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Corny. Remember how you once used that word to describe the log of yellow kernels on your plastic plate instead of the jokes your boss makes in the break room? Sit on the front stoop, pull husks back and watch silk scatter into the crevices with a gust of wind.

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How do you recapture youth when energy is what you buy in a powder to swirl in your orange juice? Allow your standards to collapse and cultivate a Sabbath heart. You are free to fly because you will always be a child in the heart of God.

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