Hello Strangers.

I waited all winter for firefly season. I usually write about pleasant things, but I won’t today. It was a cold and gray winter. The highways were littered with the bodies of dogs dumped in the streets by their owners. A puppy in the middle of a bridge. Animals shot, but not killed. Police and animal control called, but not answered. Everywhere I looked, there was a starving dog or a cold house filled with suffering people, a junkyard or a sick horse. You volunteer. You step in, or step up, but you can’t save them all. In fact, you can’t save many at all.

I waited all winter for firefly season. They’re still here. But I’ve missed it.

My small dream this Saturday is that next year I would get up and bring a mason jar outside. I’ll catch ten or fifteen lightning bugs. I’ll take a picture. I’ll watch them blink. And then I’ll let them go. A bit of the old magic from childhood. It’s one of the smallest dreams I have on here.

I just said a lot of hopeless things. But I’ve been thinking about this lately: In the story of Jacob and Rachel, Rachel has two children. The first was Joseph. The second child, she named as she lay dying. She called him Ben-Oni, which means ‘Son of my Sorrow.’ Jacob looked at the child and called him Benjamin, ‘Son of my Right Hand.’ I have also heard it said, ‘Son of my Strength.’ What Rachel believed was grief, Jacob named strength. When she died, the child would have to bear his own name. Jacob chose to name him something he would be able to carry.

What we name things, situations, people, matters. What we name ourselves when the hard times come is similarly important. And so often, the things we count as sorrows are the vessels for strength. So if you’re a helper, and I’ve made you feel like it isn’t worthwhile to keep helping, that’s not the right way to view it. This winter I was in pain and that wasn’t wrong of me. But what I called grief, I misnamed. Opportunity. Every ounce of suffering, an opportunity.

“And I have been a constant example of how you can help those in need by working hard. You should remember the words of the Lord Jesus: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Acts 20:35

In the short time I have left, I’ll take pictures of any lighting bugs I catch.

Blessings to you, and don’t waste your firefly season.

–Mabel

P.S. If you look closely at the picture above, you’ll see a tiny orange speck in the background to the right. That my friends, is a window in the dark.