“Adults Don’t Play”, The Lie That Almost Broke Me

There’s a line from the very first children’s book I ever wrote.

“Adults don’t play.”

When I wrote it, it held my story.

Unraveling the lie in those words would help carry me back to myself.

The Lake

The book The Boy Who Played With the Wind was written in the middle of the hardest season of my life.

I was trying to be everything for everyone.
Sleeping an hour a night.
Running on fumes.
A business had failed.
I rarely saw my kids.
Divorce loomed like a storm I couldn’t outrun.

I felt broken.

One day, I found myself sitting by a lake — exhausted, empty, unsure how I’d gotten so far from myself.

I wrote.

For the first time in nearly fifteen years.

Not strategy.
Not productivity.
Not performance.

Just story.

I wrote about a boy who ran with the wind.
Who felt it as a friend.
Who was strengthened, comforted, and carried by it.

At the time, I wasn’t actively thinking about my near-death experience or heaven.
I wasn’t theologizing.
I wasn’t analyzing.

I was remembering.

The wind I wrote about — the one that comforted, lifted, and stayed — was the Holy Spirit.
I didn’t name it then.
But my body knew.

“Adults Don’t Play”

As the story unfolded, the boy grew.
And like so many of us, he learned a lie the world teaches well:

Adults don’t play.

Not because it’s true —
but because play threatens systems built on exhaustion.

Play threatens performance.
Play threatens control.
Play threatens the idea that love must be earned.

In the story, the wind grows quiet.
Not absent — just waiting.

And the boy, now a man, feels the ache of forgetting who he was.

That wasn’t fiction.
That was confession.

I never published the book.
I set it aside.
Life kept moving.

The Beach

Five or six years later, everything looked different.

I was on the other side of divorce.
Not living with my kids.
And walking in healing, building connection with them beyond time and space.

God’s promise — the one that felt impossible — had come true.
The woman He had spoken of was beside me.
Before she was my wife, she was already my companion, my encourager, my partner in wonder.

We were on our first vacation together.
A quiet beach.
Our favorite café.

She had already written books.
She believed in words.
She believed in mine.

She encouraged me to return to writing.
And we started with the children’s book I had written years earlier — the one I never finished or published.

I used a pen name.
A combination of my grandfathers’ names.
Men I loved.
Men who carried strength and gentleness together.

As she read the manuscript, she stopped.

She looked up at me.

And she said, quietly but clearly:

“That line… ‘adults don’t play’ — that hits deep.”

She felt it.
I felt it again.
Fully this time.

Beloved Children, Not Performers

That moment became a hinge in our lives.

Not a rejection of adulthood.
Not an abandonment of stewardship.

But a return to truth.

We are not called to carry responsibility the way the world defines it —
as pressure, burden, or proving.

We are called to stewardship.

To tend.
To care.
To participate with the Father.

Still beloved.
Still playful.
Still open.
Still curious.

Jesus said the Kingdom belongs to children.
Not because they are naive —
but because they are available.

They see possibility.
They trust presence.
They live in wonder.

The Kingdom is hidden from the learned —
from those who think they already know —
and revealed to babes.

Those willing to play.
To imagine.
To receive.

Playing Again

Play is not frivolous.
It’s how we open.

It’s how the nervous system softens.
How creativity returns.
How joy re-enters the body.
How the Spirit moves again — like wind.

Play is not the opposite of maturity.
It’s the soil of wholeness.

I’m learning — with gratitude, humility, and laughter —
to play again.

To live as a beloved child.
To steward what I’ve been given without carrying what was never mine.
To trust the Father.
To let the wind move.

Because the truth is this:

Adults don’t stop playing because they grow up.
They stop playing because they forget they’re loved.

And when we remember?

The wind is still there.
Waiting.
Ready to dance.

Let’s play and dance in the sand experiencing all of the joy, love, and laughter of heaven in this moment!

Infinite love and blessings,

Nicholas