I wasn't that good...I was just serving. I was a million miles from home in Haiti documenting our church's involvement and the love to be found through a mission trip. I'd never been out of the country and live in a safe little bubble away from the atrocities of violence and oppression. My team collaborated with a local church outside Port au Prince to host a VBS-style day camp for the children, so I made it my mission to focus not on the travesty of the obvious poverty and filth that surrounded the host site, but to find the beauty in the humanity there. I did so in girls giggling as they played jump rope, in a woman sitting proudly beside her wares at the market, in a man smiling as he herded his few cattle down the barren dirt road, in a little boy showing off his plateful of beans, rice and chicken feet with pure delight. This was years ago in my photography career (prior to forming Firefly), so to capture an image through a soap bubble was something I would not have been able to do again intentionally if I tried a hundred times...I wasn't that good. I just saw this sweet little girl completely enveloped in the simple pleasure of blowing bubbles, not having to worry about the politics of her country or her role in society as a female or by race. That was the beauty I had come to Haiti to see, but my image showed me so much more...all the pretty colors cast out by the bubble surrounding her face were a glorious symbolism of how love, even in the saddest of times and places, is capable of expanding and bringing in more light to our souls so that we can all share it with others.
If you enjoy reading positive messages such as this or my other weekly blog posts, please share it with a friend, on your timeline or just pass on the positivity. Shine your light, my friends.
