Nature’s Night Lights

Random fact #0613: Mel sleeps with a nightlight. Two actually. One in my main room off on the side left wall and another in the bathroom which I can see from my bed. I am not afraid of the dark–I just don’t like the dark due to bad balance. My night lights serve as a safety purpose, without them, I fall.

I will leave you to imagine how I look when I walk in the dark. Darkness is the reason why I do not especially care for winter months. In the summer, I can still be outside around 9pm and be fine. When it finally gets dark, it is best that I have assistance…usually an arm from a person walking beside me or if I go out on the back patio to feed Muffy his bed-time snack, I initially hold on to the rail by the door to balance then take it slow to a chair (plus the patio lights are on and I stay in the lighted area).

I find it is easiest to wait for Muffy to finish eating by just sitting. Thus, I sat last night with no thoughts–just staring into the darkness ahead of me. Then it happened…Fireflies!!! I have been waiting for this moment since the start of Spring! In my mind, it is now the official start of Summer!!

I remember fireflies when we lived in Toledo until I was six. After the move to Colorado, our days of seeing fireflies were limited to when we took family vacations back out east to visit family and friends. Once when visiting friends near Chicago, we were taking a walk and fireflies came out. All of a sudden, gleeful cries and the pursuit of catching them took place…never mind the fact that we were teenagers. I still find it fun to catch fireflies and last night in my excitement, I banged on the window and yelled, “I just saw a firefly!!” I even held up my arms like a victory field goal, which probably looked and sounded more like George Bailey wishing Mr. Potter a “Merry Christmas” in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Although Colorado does not have fireflies, I don’t think that it ever bugged me. (Bugged: haha, Mel humor!!) I know this because God provided a different form of fireflies: nature’s fireflies. Best part was that I did not have to wait for certain seasons to see them. From our backyard, in complete darkness, the vastness of the evening sky and the twinkling of unfathomable numbers of stars was far greater than trying to catch fireflies.

A few months ago at dinner, I told my mom that I was having a hard time reading Holley Gerth’s blog posts, because all this talk about having God-sized dreams left me feeling like I was sitting in a closet with the lights turned off. “I don’t have any God-sized dreams,” I said. Truth…I still don’t–at least I do not recognize them at the time. Not only my Mom, but countless others have kindly reminded me that I don’t have to do big things to be used by God. Even the tiniest star in the sky is still visible, just because it shines–and it shines even brighter when surrounded by others doing the same.

“Shine like stars across the land.” Philippians 2:15b (The Voice)