Outer Glow effect hiding under background image

Hi!  I'm trying to create an outerglow effect to a lightsaber.  I watched a youtube video tutorial and I have a couple things that is not working properly.  It worked fine for one image but now I'm on a second and nothing is working properly!

1. I create a lasso selection of the lightsaber on a new layer but when I fill it with solid color, the object is unselected and I can't reselect it.  

- My solution, fill it in with a brush instead of the simple fill to keep it selected.

2. I click on the layer to add the outer glow effect and I can select the color, change the settings, & see the preview but when I press ok, the effect is not seen on the image (it shows in the layer panel that their was an effect).  However, if I hide the background image, I can see the layer with the outer glow effect with the transparent background.

-My solution tried, arranging the layer to over the background and still doesn't work, making the background a layer and arranging it backwards, still doesn't work. 

*yes, I have the outer glow option set to screen and played with basically all the settings at this point.

Please help!