I'm picturing miniature blue and white striped umbrellas abandoned at the patio door by their creepy, and dead, owners.
Terminex man isn't sympathetic toward me, but toward them. He's got the hospitality thing going, and I'm not feeling the Texas "Drive Friendly" slogan. No. I'm waiting for Terminex man to aim the hose, pull the trigger on the metal capsule strapped to his chest, and to run them off the road they've been carving to the crack just under the door where the wooden strip has worn loose.
"So," I want to make sure he understands the dire situation here, "one of them stunk like a skunk, and another lit up like a firefly, but it didn't look like a firefly, and they're all this big!" I want to stretch my arms out, but I'm not telling a fish story; so I settle for the span between my thumb and index
finger while eyeing that canister, with growing anticipation.
He chats on about species of beetles, and tells me they're not building nests or foraging for food or up to no good. "They're just wet and hungry and lost, Ma'am."
I think I hear a cricket playing a violin score from across the room.
He unstraps the hose from the canister, shakes his head, pulls the trigger and over the hissing stream of chemical tells me, "This probably won't make a difference, you know; 'cause they've got hard shells."
Did he just cluck his tongue, tsk-tsk?
I now know more about beetles than I ever wanted to know. Seems to me there's been a crawly theme in my days as of late. A grub in my backyard, beetles in my home and I'm feeling a wee bit defensive about my housekeeping skills right about now. Terminex man wouldn't understand.
"Lord?" Yeah, He understands. "I don't get it. What's up with the beetles?"
He knows I have a favorite beetle, but that doesn't mean I want it on my floor. I've decided that my favorite beetle is only my favorite as long as it's outside blinking in the evening wood.
Maybe there's not much to say about the stinky beetles, except "Don't be like that." But fireflies? I know enough about them to know there's a lot more to be said.
"Go get that children's book you wrote." He's going to tell me what's up with the beetles. Mentally, I turn to the pages about fireflies, while I look for the book.
"Here it is!" I begin reading what I wrote.
"Fireflies have everything they need to glow. They shine their light from the inside out! It's just what they were made to do! You were made for God's light to shine inside you! Shine His light from the inside out, too! What do you think that means?"
Mason jars with solar lights inside of them hang from peach tree branches. I placed the small lights inside the jars, and hung them last summer. They remind me of the fireflies my children caught in jars on summer evenings in the tall grass, barefoot at wood's edge.
"Wanna do it again?" His eyes flicker firelight from within because that's what happens when you're filled with light.
"You mean make another firefly jar?" Just to clarify He's not asking if I want to run in the tall grass in my nighty and barefoot. What would the neighbors think?
"Mm-hmm," there's a smirk in His voice. He knows I have one remaining solar light and mason jar left over over.
We unscrew the lid to the jar, and the solar head from it's stand, and I decide whether to fill the jar halfway with colorful plastic beads, or blue sand left over from one of my children's craft projects years ago, or the bedazzle beads left over from the jeans we bedazzled and painted AHS down the legs for Senior Spirit Day at Allen High School.
"Lord?"
"Hm-mm?" Is He sharing the same memories I am?
"Remember?"
"Mm-hmm, I remember."
The blue sand is too blue. I don't mind being a bit sentimental, but I stop where it turns kind of melancholic. I pick the bedazzle beads and pour them into the jar, "Fill me with Your dazzle, Lord!"
He is dazzling.
"My pleasure!" I think He loves dazzle. He loves gems. He must love the sea of glass which dazzles as crystal before His throne and, I imagine, because of His light. And isn't there a rainbow around His throne, in appearance like an emerald? There is. I read it in Revelation. I've also read that He Himself is in appearance like jasper and sardius gemstones, and that He possibly might see me in appearance as a ruby. It's how He describes the infamous Proverbs 31 woman who is, if anything, His ideal.
I stand the solar light in the bedazzle beads. Gems. And I dress it up with a splash of red before I take a picture because I'm getting into this gem of a gig!
"I'd like to bring Your joy, Your care, Your energy to others with as little effort as it takes these solar lights to light up, or even better, that it takes a firefly to light up and play." I'm thinking that if it feels as heavy burden to bring the light of God to others, then I'm probably striving to make my own light.
I measure out some twine and snip it.
"Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good works and glorify Me." He reminds me of His word.
"You put Your light in me!" Letting my light shine just happens when my light is His light given. It's as if He says to me, of His light, This is yours. I'm giving My light to you. Play with it!
"Wanna go hang this on the branch out there?" I play with Him.
"Let's go!"
I'm finding out that it's all joy to shine the light that He put in me to shine. I'm grateful that it's His joy to bedazzle me. It's what He does.
I hang the firefly jar around the old branch, stand back and look at the firefly jar and sense His pleasure. "It's like a necklace of gems and light!"
"It's a garland of grace," He whispers His delight beneath the green canopy of leaves overhead.
"Ah, yeah." The words are mostly just exhale in the breathtaking. "A garland of grace."
I'm not as a glass mason jar. I'm clay jar. I'm cracked in places. But isn't this what grace is for?
Isn't grace for the cracked clay jars?
Isn't it grace that His light shines through the cracks where I've been broken?
It is, to me.
It's grace that light shines through the hard shells of firefly beetles, too.
written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig
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