I'm confessing here to a little addiction I have developed. There's this game called "Book Worm" that I can play on my Palm Pilot. I fell in love with it mostly because no one in my family will play word games with me. So when I found a good one I could play "solitaire," I was quickly hooked!

The game is simple. It's sort of like "Boggle"; there's a screen full of letter tiles, and you connect adjoining letters to make words. Periodically a "burning tile" drops down from the top of the screen. If you don't use that letter in a word before it reaches the bottom, the library "burns down" and your game is over.

Here's the thing about "Book Worm": There's no such thing as winning. Ultimately, enough burning tiles fill up the screen that you can't use them all. The library burns down EVERY SINGLE TIME!

That being the case, why do I continue to play (and love) this game? The answer is simple, of course: to see if I can beat my previous high score. (I almost never do.) To stay in it for as long as I can. To savor the fun of building an especially long word or an extra clever one. And playing it is fun!

I find it interesting that there are so many aspects of my life that operate on this same principle, but at which I feel I am failing because I can't seem to "win." No matter how clean I get my house, I can always see more that needs to be cleaned. And then it just gets dirty again! No matter how great a dinner I fix for my family tonight, they're going to want to eat again tomorrow. (I know - selfish, huh?) The lawn doesn't stay mowed, the laundry doesn't stay folded, the groceries don't magically reproduce and replace themselves in the refrigerator as we deplete them. IT NEVER ENDS!

So I have to see it as a game. Maybe this is the week I'll get extra points for saving money on the food budget. Maybe I'll get "good mom" points for helping with the history project. Maybe I'll find some extra time to get deeper into the scriptures or write a meaningful letter or bake someone some cookies.

I won't do them all. I can't. But the cool thing is, after every "Game Over" I get an invitation to "Start a New Game." So I'm just here to see if I can beat my own score every once in a while, to stay in it for as long as I can, and to remember that the fun is in the playing.