Don’t Worry, Bee Happy: How to Find Joy in Everyday Moments

On finding joy in ordinary things, and why it matters more than we think

Dear friend,

I want to start today with a bumblebee. Not a metaphor yet… an actual bumblebee. The round, improbable, impossibly fuzzy kind that lands on a flower with all the grace of a small golden helicopter and somehow makes it work anyway. The kind that buzzes past your ear on a summer afternoon and makes you stop whatever you’re doing, just to watch.

Here’s something I find completely delightful. According to the laws of aerodynamics, the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly. Its body is too large, its wings too small. Scientists have checked the numbers, and the conclusion, as far as the physics are concerned, is that the bumblebee is grounded.

The bumblebee has not read that report. It flies anyway.

I tell my children, have faith like a bumblebee.

So today I want to talk about joy. Small joy. Holy, ordinary joy. The kind that lives in bumblebees and summer afternoons, in the smell of something good on the stove, in the particular quality of light at four o’clock on an autumn day. The kind we so often rush past because we’ve decided the serious things deserve our full attention, and the small, beautiful things can wait.

But they can’t wait. And I don’t think God ever intended them to.

A painting, and a pun I don’t regret

I want to tell you about a painting I made, and I need to warn you, it contains a pun. A deliberate, unrepentant, fully committed pun. I painted a bumblebee, round and golden and gloriously fuzzy, and around it, I lettered the words, “Don’t worry, be happy… be e like the insect.”

I’m not ashamed. I made it because I believe joy should be allowed to be playful sometimes. Those of us who love depth and meaning and the theological weight of things have a tendency to make everything so serious that we accidentally squeeze the delight out of it. And delight, I’d argue, is one of the most underrated spiritual disciplines there is.

Sometimes the truest things come in the simplest packages… a bumblebee, a pun, a wildflower growing through a crack in the pavement. God is not above using any of these. I think He rather delights in it.

Tom Bombadil and the ring that had nothing to offer him

I want to talk about one of my favorite characters in all of literature, and I want to register my formal complaint that he was left out of the Lord of the Rings films. If Gollum is getting his own movie (and apparently he is), then I believe the adventures of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry deserve equal consideration, and I will not be taking any questions.

If you’ve only seen the films, you’ve never met Tom Bombadil, and that’s a genuine loss I hope you’ll remedy. He’s ancient, he’s joyful, he wears a tall hat with a blue feather and yellow boots, and he sings almost everything he says. His wife Goldberry is the river, and their home in the Old Forest is one of the most luminous places in all of Middle Earth.

But here’s the thing about Tom Bombadil that I find astonishing. When Frodo puts on the One Ring, the ring that makes everyone invisible, the ring that corrupts and controls and consumes, Tom Bombadil is immune to it. He can see Frodo perfectly well, and he remains completely, cheerfully, entirely unaffected. He puts the ring on and stays visible. He tosses it in the air like a toy and hands it back without a second thought.

Tolkien’s explanation, or at least what can be gathered from his letters, isn’t that Tom is more powerful than Sauron, or that he has some secret resistance to evil. It’s something far more interesting than that. Tom Bombadil is so entirely himself, so completely rooted in the present joy of his own existence, so thoroughly at home in the created world and in his own nature, that the ring simply has nothing to offer him. It can’t promise him power he wants. It can’t threaten him with a loss he fears. He’s already full. He’s already free. He’s already home.

The ring has power over those who are grasping for something they don’t have. But a man who is genuinely, deeply rooted in the present moment… a content man… is untouchable by it.

Wonder does that. Delight does that. The holy, ordinary practice of noticing the bumblebee, the quality of the afternoon light, the particular joy of a good cup of something warm… these aren’t small things. They’re the practice of being so present, so rooted in the goodness of the created world and the God who made it, that the things which promise to fill the empty places simply find no empty places to fill.

Tom Bombadil, I’d argue, is one of the most spiritually whole characters in all of fiction. And he got there by singing in his kitchen, loving his wife, and knowing every tree in the Old Forest by name.

This is the day

Psalm 118:24 says, “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

It’s a verse we’ve said so many times it’s almost become invisible. We put it on mugs and wall decals and morning devotionals, and somewhere along the way, the radical dailiness of it got smoothed over. But I want you to hear it freshly for a moment.

This day. Not a better day, not a day when all things are resolved and circumstances are favorable and the grocery bill is manageable and the children are being reasonable. This one. This ordinary Tuesday, this unremarkable Wednesday, this Friday that feels exactly like last Friday. The Lord made this day. He designed it. He placed you in it on purpose. And the invitation, the command even, is to find the rejoicing that’s available inside it.

Not to manufacture cheerfulness you don’t feel, but to look with intention for the thing in this specific day that’s worth noticing. The bumblebee. The good coffee. The child’s laugh. The unexpected kindness of a stranger. The way the light came through the window at exactly the right angle for exactly a moment.

This is the day. It is enough.

Rejoice, even from a prison cell

Philippians 4:4 says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice.” Paul wrote this from prison. I think we should sit with that for a moment. He wasn’t writing from a comfortable study or a pleasant afternoon in the garden. He was in chains. And he said, rejoice always. Then, as if he knew we’d need the repetition, as if he knew how easily we’d dismiss it or explain it away, he said it again. Rejoice.

The Greek word here is chairo, and it carries not just the meaning of happiness, but of a deep, settled, chosen orientation toward grace. It’s active. It’s a turning toward joy. In the biblical sense, joy isn’t a feeling that descends on you when circumstances cooperate. It’s a practice, a discipline, a daily decision to turn your face toward the good and true and beautiful things, even when, especially when, the hard things are also present.

Chairo… to rejoice, to be glad, to find grace in the present moment. An active and chosen orientation toward gratitude and delight. Not the absence of difficulty, but the presence of something stronger than it. A joy that doesn’t depend on circumstances because it’s rooted in something circumstances can’t touch.

The bumblebee doesn’t wait for ideal flying conditions. It flies anyway. And Paul didn’t wait for prison to become comfortable before he rejoiced. He rejoiced anyway, because the joy he’s describing isn’t housed in his circumstances. It’s housed somewhere that change cannot reach.

The God who sings over you

Now, the verse I think is the most astonishing thing in all of Scripture on this topic. The one that reframes the entire conversation, because up until now, we’ve been talking about our joy, our practice of noticing, our choice to rejoice, our bumblebee faith. But Zephaniah 3:17 turns the whole thing around.

“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt over you with loud singing.”

The God who spoke galaxies into existence. The God who designed the mathematics of the bumblebee’s wings. The God who wove the Fibonacci sequence into the sunflower and the nautilus and the spiral of the Milky Way… that God is singing over you. Loudly. With joy.

You’re not someone He tolerates. You’re not a project He’s managing. You’re not a problem He’s solving. You are someone He sings over. Someone whose existence produces joy in the heart of the Creator of the universe.

When you stop to notice the bumblebee, when you let yourself feel the small, uncomplicated happiness of a summer afternoon, or a child’s laugh, or a painting that makes you smile, you’re not being frivolous. You’re participating in something God Himself is doing. He made the bee. He made the summer. He made you with the capacity for wonder and delight, and yes, the particular joy of a good pun. And He is singing about it.

Wonder is not childish. It is worship. It’s the natural response of a creature who recognizes the fingerprints of her Creator on everything she touches, and cannot help but be glad.

A little honey between the harder episodes

I keep coming back to that bumblebee painting because I love it unreservedly. Round, glorious, and gloriously fuzzy, the little panda of the garden, because that’s exactly what they are, and I won’t hear otherwise. Handlettered words curving around it… don’t worry, be happy. A painting that doesn’t ask anything heavy of you, that simply invites you to smile and remember that joy is allowed to be simple and warm and a little bit silly sometimes.

I wanted to create something that would make a person exhale. Something that would catch your eye on a hard Tuesday and remind you that the bumblebee is out there right now, defying aerodynamics, visiting flowers entirely unbothered. And you can be a little bit like that today, rooted enough in the goodness of small things that the weight of the impossible feels a little lighter.

I want to say this one more time, because I think many of us, especially the deep thinkers, the serious feelers, the women who’ve been through enough that lightheartedness can feel almost like a betrayal of everything they’ve survived… those women need permission to hear it.

Wonder is not childish. It is worship. It is the bumblebee flying anyway. It is Tom Bombadil singing in the Old Forest, so rooted in present joy that the darkness has nothing to offer him. It is Paul rejoicing in chains because the joy he carries is housed somewhere chains cannot reach. It is the God of the universe singing loudly over the life of one ordinary woman on one ordinary Tuesday, because she is His, and that is simply what love does.

Notice something beautiful today. Not because everything is fine and the hard things aren’t real, but because this is the day the Lord has made, and there is something in it. Something small and golden and improbable, buzzing past your ear on its way to the next flower.

That is worth being glad about.

Have faith like a bumblebee. Fly anyway, and let yourself hear, underneath the ordinary sounds of your ordinary day, the faint and wonderful sound of someone singing over you.

Until next time, notice the bumblebee. Wonder is worship, and God is singing.

With love from the edge of the forest, Raeanna

If today’s letter stirred something in you, come find me at atforestsedge.com, where you’ll find my art, my book, The Happy Little Sunflower: Finding Hope in the Valley, my newsletter, and a way to reach me directly. I’d love to hear what’s on your heart.