How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!

How skilfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!
And labors hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.

In works of labor or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.

In books, or work, or healthful play,
Let my first years be passed,
That I may give for every day
Some good account at last.

~Isaac Watts~

I wasn’t planning on choosing a word for 2018.

Mostly because my “follow through” has been a bit “iffy” the last few years and I felt a little discouraged with myself. My goal over the past few years has been to simplify, to make do, to peel away a lot of the extra things that have kept me so, so busy, and because of that, I’ve let some balls drop. A few have rolled completely away and I can’t even find them. Last year I tried to pick some things back up, and still dropped a few of them due to unexpected circumstances. So, I was planning on just “being” this year, without thinking too hard about what this year would hold.

However…

My word for 2018 accidentally came to fruition with the purchase of a new journal. I usually buy a new one in January, but was going to make do and keep using my old one until it ran out of pages. However, my daughter Kate was buying herself a new journal and asked if I wanted to order at the same time to save on shipping.

And there was one with bees embossed on the cover.

Who could resist?

I mean, bees.

I love bees.

When I began drawing in my calendars for this year, I kept quoting to myself
the opening lines from Watt’s poem “Against Idleness and Mischief”
and thinking about being “busy as a bee.”

Now this may seem like a complete contrast to my paring back years. But I stopped and thought about bees for a bit. They are busy. Industrious. Faithfully and continuously working.

Diligent.

A bee stays busy at what she’s supposed to be doing. What she were designed to do. She wouldn’t think of getting distracted and heading off for some new scheme. Nope. It’s honey-making and comb-building every day for her! She’s diligent about her work.

And I need to be too.

About building and sweetening my home, my family, my friends, my church, and my little home business. A little at a time, I’m picking back up the important things, the things I was designed to do, and diligently working on them.