Burning Couches

Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't go the way you plan. Sometimes it's awesome, and you get the little tingly sensations on the back of your neck as you contemplate how your small sacrifice just may have changed the doomed course of all mankind. I mean, I'm sure Salvation Army is happy you donated the knock off Louis Vuitton purse that you spilled Diet Coke all over, but I don't think that's necessarily equivalent to saving the world. Still, helping people can feel pretty great.

But the more you help people, the more you realize that things are going to go wrong. Sometimes horribly, horribly wrong. Why? Well, for one, people are in the equation.

If you want to help clean up pelicans suffering from an oil spill, get a teaspoon of Dawn, a gallon of water, a toothbrush and some Q-tips (This blog post was not sponsored by the Dawn or Q-Tip brands) and get to work. I'm no biologist, but it's fairly simple.

If you want to help the environment, just reduce, reuse, and recycle.

If you want to save tiny orphan tigers, introduce them to a momma pig who will nurse them back to health. (What is our fascination with weird animal pairings anyway? I can't get enough of cute pictures of hippos and tortoises playing together!)

Precious, right?

But people; we're far more messy. Well, not literally. I've been to a zoo. Animals poop a lot.

I've learned by trial and error that there is no quick fix for people. A lot of times you try your best to help someone and trouble rains down on you.

It doesn't even necessarily mean you're doing something wrong.

Sometimes it means you're actually doing something right.

And sometimes it probably doesn't mean anything at all.

Like this weekend. We have a close friend who needed some help, so one of the things we did was have a garage sale. It was the garage sale of all garage sales.

Plus I made colorful signs with stars on them. They were snazzy.

We raised a lot of money and most importantly, made a lasting impression on our friend of how much we love him.

We also had some stuff left over.

Including a couch. We loaded up most of the extra stuff to take to Sally Ann, but we put the couch by the road in case someone wanted it.

After a long hard weekend Trevor and I finally settled down to sleep around midnight on Sunday. As Trevor started dozing off I listened to what I thought was a bee buzzing and flitting around our window screen. The noise got louder and was accompanied by pops and fizzes.

I turned over and noticed bright orange lights dancing across my ceiling. In my daze (I'm waiting on a root canal and took two T-3s to help me sleep) I realized there were no hapless bugs trying to make their way into our home.

There was a fire. Very close.

First I thought maybe it was our friend's house across the street. No, too far away.

Then I thought maybe the roof directly in front of our window was on fire. When I looked out the window in panic I realized it was the couch.

Trevor grabbed his keys and ran outside to move our van, which was parked next to the couch.

I looked like I was the stupid one from a sitcom that stands there stunned asking
"what do we do?" You know, the one who runs around panicking until someone knocks them out and carries them over their shoulder to safety? That was me. (I blame that completely on the medication.)

Someone had doused that stupid couch in gasoline and lit it on fire.

We stood and watched as a fire truck pulled up. A little over the top. But, I didn't call them so whatever. They pulled out their huge hose for that little couch. It was kind of like using a missile launcher to kill a fly. Then the firefighters decided we needed to get the police involved. Awesome.

The police officer asked us if anyone held a grudge against us. Really? What is this? Law and Order Criminal Intent? Trevor thought maybe one of our church members doesn't like his preaching. It looked to me like someone was holding a grudge against the couch, not us.

Forty five minutes later, we were tucked back in our bed with no leads and a smoldering couch frame decorating our driveway. Double awesome.

Still free to good home. Some smoke damage, but nothing a little Febreeze can't fix.

All of a sudden the high we were on from our successful weekend of helping our friend turned into dejected exhaustion as we pondered how exactly we would discard the charred remains.

Then our friend we were helping stopped by last night. And he reminded me why we help people. Because love wins. (I paid Rob Bell five bucks to say that.) I saw how much an outpouring of love and support can change a person's perspective. How it stays with them a lot longer than the actual physical help may.

Money will come and go. Couches will be used as bonfire fuel. Hopefully not in your front yard.

But sometimes, when you are open to God working through you, God will use you to shine His love in someone's life.

And I wouldn't trade that for all the burnt couches in the world.