My Recycled Life by Lorrie Orr

 

Inspired by Brenda J. Wood’s post on this blog in June 2024, R is for Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, share your thoughts on making the most of your written work. How do you recycle writing projects? Rather than reinvent, rethink.

 

It’s Tuesday morning. At the foot of every driveway is a collection of blue boxes – one for paper, one for plastics, and one for glass. I will soon hear the intermittent roar of the city truck coming up the street, stopping at every driveway to throw the blue box contents into their respective bins. (Here’s a short and interesting look at what happens after pick up.) The plastic detritus will be turned into more bottles, fabrics, plastic garden pots. Paper is made into new paper products.

Just as the physical garbage of life can be recycled (and I haven’t even mentioned composting), so can life experiences and writing. God takes often-messy life experiences and transforms them into good and beautiful things that reflect his love and light. Then we, in turn, can share about them in our writing. One example is an article written for Today’s Christian Woman about the walks that my husband and I take together. Writing about a bad mood while walking led to Staying in Step: How walking with your spouse can keep you connected. Perhaps I could now take the bones of that article (published in 2008), revise, and submit it to another publication. Or I could write the scene about being grouchy into a novel or short story.

I love the words of Isaiah where he speaks of God turning ashes into beauty, mourning into gladness, and despair into praise. What wonderful word pictures of the transformative power of God’s love for his children. I used to worry about what people were looking at when my eyes would meet those of a stranger on the ferry, in a restaurant, or while walking. Was my makeup messy? Was I wearing mismatched earrings? I’ve learned less to care about what they think about me and now pray that they would see the light of Christ shining through my face. 

On my windowsill as I write this post, a cheerful sunflower smiles at me. It's standing in a recycled glass bottle that refracts the light. Soon the sunflower itself will be tossed in the compost bin to rot and create dirt in which to grow more sunflowers next summer. The bottle will be used again and again. God is the ultimate recycler – turning darkness into light, despair into hope, and chaos into creativity.  

Lorrie Orr writes from Vancouver Island where autumn is slowly creeping

into the landscape. She is looking forward to publishing her first book, a memoir

of her experiences living in Ecuador, South America. Her slice of life blog can be found at at Fabric Paper Thread, and excerpts from her memoir at Substack.