The Great Recycler
I was in New Jersey, holding down the fort with my three American-born grandkids while my son-in-law Josh and daughter Summer were in Uganda, jumping through hoops in preparation for bringing home three brothers.
During those weeks, the good people of their church did a surprise house-and-yard-crash, led by an indomitable couple, Steve and Debbie.
It was so much fun working this energetic couple because I love taking old stuff and recycling it into cool new stuff. Like the bench seating built beneath the bow window of their older, Cape Cod-style house. And this tabletop. Made from 1x6’s that we glued to an old eight-foot door and set atop the sturdy, smaller dining table.
(In case you’re wondering, here’s what the old table looked like—the old table that would not seat eight people, which would soon be the number in my daughter and son-in-law’s family.)
And this old end table on wheels found at a garage sale. The wheels were removed, and I painted it a coastal gray, outfitted with starfish knobs. Grandson Titus and I stretched and stapled upholstery fabric across padding to make a footstool. Complete with storage.
And then there was this closet upstairs. Good for not much.
The pipe was relocated, and the space was converted into a sink closet so that any stray children locked out of the bathroom in the getting-ready-for-school process could still brush their teeth.
Recycled cabinet, sink, countertop, and mirror
With limited kitchen storage, Summer had always wanted a pantry. Steve and Debbie framed and sheet-rocked on a 6-ft stretch of dining room wall, I painted the recycled doors, new hardware was purchased. And just like that … a pantry emerged.
On the day we picked up two tired parents and three curious little boys from JFK Airport and took them through the house to show what had been refurbished and repurposed, I later caught my daughter standing with the pantry doors wide open.
She looked at me with a happy sigh. “I’m just going to stand here and stare into my pantry for a while.”
Joan Wester Anderson writes about the main character, Agnes, in a fiction entitled Dear James:
“Soon she will understand ... that God is the Great Recycler, that none of our experiences are ever wasted, and that he will make the wholeness of a new life out of broken pieces of the old—as long as we are willing to offer those pieces to him.”
God does this thing that’s even more useful and beautiful than what Josh & Summer’s church did for them in anticipation of adding three more children to their family. He takes our sorrows and losses and transforms them into something beautiful and useful if we allow it.
At the time of this house-and-yard conversion, I was seven months into widowhood. Only seven months. And already, the Great Recycler was at work in my loss, already rebirthing a new purpose.
While they were in Uganda, Josh and Summer knew nothing about what was transpiring back at home. When they FaceTimed, the kids had to be careful where they stood so their parents wouldn’t see anything different in the background – wall colors, new (used) furniture, built-ins.
The anticipation of seeing their faces when they returned home from Africa—this unexpected refurbishing that had unfurled during the six weeks they were out of the country—was a joy to those of us who did the surprising.
In that same vein, I think our heavenly Father takes great pleasure in his role as the Great Recycler. I think he loves surprising us. And I think he’s delighted when we’re delighted with the unexpected beauty that he fashions out of our broken places as we offer them to him.
I’ve learned since that season of loss and gain—of losing a husband and gaining three grandsons—that none of our life experiences are wasted. Including the hard ones. And maybe especially the hard ones. There is good purpose in it all.
