Honey, I’m home!
“Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones” (Proverbs 16:24).
Thank the good Lord for pleasant words! Just the greeting of our husband at the door at the end of a long day of troubles and trials can be sweet to the soul. It’s like a taste of honey which can brighten our eyes like it did to Jonathan in 1 Samuel 14:27. Even more so when the greeting is followed by words of kindness and encouragement.
Words, words, words! We sing about preventing angry words from soiling our lips, but do we actively replace them with positive, uplifting and sweet words? It is not something we naturally do, so please don’t feel bad if you don’t. (Besides, that’s not the purpose of MY words here!)
The honey harvest was pretty good this year, and the shelves are stacked with about a hundred pounds of new spring honey.
It takes a single bee her whole lifetime to make a 1/12 teaspoon of honey. The sweetener in my chamomile tea represents the life’s work of twelve remarkable insects.
Similarly, it’s hard work to be sweet, and to have our mouths continually filled with pleasant words. When you’re raising children or managing a household even without little ones, the basic job description is to correct what went awry over the course of the day/week/year.
Doing dishes? You are fixing the problem of food scraps on plates and bowls, etc.. Vacuuming? You are fixing the problem of outdoor dirt coming inside and causing eyesores and unhealthy surfaces. The very nature of doing these and similar jobs efficiently includes soliciting cooperation by the people who affect and are affected by these issues.
And that’s where the unpleasant words come in. “Please wipe your feet on the mat, dear. I’ve just swept the kitchen.” “If you rinse that cereal bowl out after using it, it won’t take as long to wash.” Those instructions — because we all know that’s what they are — too often come off as “nagging.” They don’t register in the mind as “pleasant.”
One method we use to reduce the unpleasant words is commonly known as “choosing your battles.” Reducing the negative reinforcement can be done by prioritizing which issues we want to “battle.” It’s a sad reality that some of these interactions, meant well by us, DO become battles.
Another method we can use is to do what the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics suggested. “Any criticism needs to be sandwiched between two thick layers of praise.” We could take it a step further if we truly want healing to the bones and framework of our families.
We could generously scatter the praise and the encouraging words throughout the days and weeks. That way, when a “Can you please hang up your wet towel” happens, it won’t be looked at as firing the first shot in an all-out war.
The presence of so much honey in our kitchen right after honey harvest is reminding me to use more pleasant words, and to spread them thickly and sincerely. It was important when the nectar outside was plentiful, that we gave the bees a place to put it.
In order to have enough sweet, honey-like words to share with those around us, we must make a place in our hearts to store the basic ingredient. God’s words in the form of the Bible is our source.
“How sweet are Your words to my taste!
Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth” (Psalm 119:103).
Sweetness in, sweetness out.