Sleeping Outside

Demetri Martin has a new show on Comedy Central called Important Things. Now, usually I don't watch Comedy Central because it doesn't (usually) mirror what's on NatGeo, Discovery, Travel, Vs., or Animal Planet. Not that Important Things has anything in common with those shows, either. Demetri just has a comedic style that 1) is remarkably similar to the late Mitch Hedberg, and 2) sounds alot like the kind of humor that daily spills from my mouth.
So, Kara and I were watching the show last night (because we didn't want to stay up Wednesday night to see it when it originally aired), and the whole show was about timing. And one little transitional "joke" stuck with me more than the rest. There's a picture of a tent, and a caption reading "camping." Then, the wind picks up, the tent blows away, and for a brief moment, the cartoon man who was inside the tent is no longer camping: now he's "sleeping outside." It's all about timing.
I tell you that to tell you this. Last night, Kara and I started counseling a couple through the church. And the things they're dealing with, we went through ourselves at one point or another. The lessons we learned were hard because we didn't have anyone to guide us through our struggles, but we got through them when we finally realized that we couldn't do anything until we included God.
If we had not learned those lessons then, we'd just be "sleeping outside" right now, feeling lost and overwhelmed instead of knowing that the future is bright for the couple we're counseling. I realize that God uses our trials as training for things he's planning for us, and it's just so awesome to see those situations beginning to blossom. It really makes me appreciate the lessons that sucked so hard to learn, because now I feel like I can say, "Do you even know how good this is going to be for you guys?! Yeah, it's going to be hard, and it's gonna suck, and there' no immediate 'fix,' but if you just let God do what He wants to do for you - because He loves you enough to do everything - then your marriage is going to be unrecognizable from the one you have right now!"
Jeff Winchester said that "a deep relationship with God implies hidden, because something that's deep is usually hidden. But if you choose to live your life at the surface, then you have to learn to live by grace." You have to be raw and accessible. You have to get rid of the comfort zone. You have to be willing to show and relive your own mistakes so that you can walk alongside others. See, when you're camping, you usually bring a tent, something that will protect you from the elements. But when you sleep outside, you're out there for everyone to see, completely exposed to the elements. That's how I'd like my walk with God to be - exposed, raw, and visible, the good and the bad. I have to be willing to let people see the imperfections, because sometimes the broken pieces inside are the very things that God can use to "fix" others. I know that sounds campy, but I prefer to call it sleeping outside.