flashing hope signals

...or perhaps you call them fireflies? I grew up calling them lightening bugs... but I think I've switched to fireflies in recent years.

I've been thinking about fireflies lately. Maybe it is because we've spent many nights sitting outside, hoping the electricity will return for us to sleep with the comfort of cooler, moving air. Maybe it is because I'm homesick for a Michigan summer... or a summer anywhere but this hot, dusty, tenuously holding onto peacefulness land. 

Whatever it is, my mind keeps drifting back to the very end of our last furlough, not long before we were scheduled to fly back to Niger, we were driving home late at night. I was crying - we'd probably just said another goodbye to someone. "See ya in three-four years," no matter what side of the ocean I'm saying it, looses any remote aura of palatable after a so many times. Oh well, as I said, I was crying and probably staring out the window, trying to hide tears from both children and hubby so I wouldn't have to talk or answer any questions. And we drove past this field, literally shimmering with blinking, glowing, flitting fireflies. Breathtakingly beautiful, I asked Tim to pull over just so we could watch and drink in the sight. It filled me with hope.

That's why as I muddle through yet another season of goodbyes, I keep mentally drifting back to that memory ~

And then I read this blog post. Jeanne Damoff has become one of my favorite bloggers. She doesn't post all the time; when she does? Wow!

For fireflies will forever be something I love about furlough years. I’ll get to see them this summer and they will continue to fill my heart with hope. They will once again remind me that grace and mercy always glimmer somewhere, even when it seems so dark. 

And best of all? 

I don’t need to trap them in a jar to enjoy the hope, peace and joy they can give. I can watch them from a distance. They can be few or many. Perhaps they are only a shimmering recollection from the past. But thinking upon fireflies makes my heart to smile, even during seasons when all feels heavy and the tears are too ready to fall.