PLEASE RECYCLE

I’m an avid fan of recycling. Taking cans, bottles, boxes, and bags to the recycling center and getting a small amount of cash for doing a great amount of good often feels great! I also know that I am doing my part to shrink the amount of waste that fills the landfills out there these days! In my city there are three types of bins we put out on the street. One is Green, and it is for the organic materials that can become compost of some sort. One is Blue, and everyone puts all their recyclable materials into it. The last one is Black, and is where people put the garbage that cannot be recycled or compost.

The other day, as I was cleaning out a glass jar to be placed in my recycle bin, a thought hit me…

So many times we toss garbage out of our mouths, things that cannot be taken back, recycled, or reused. People are treating each other like the trash they spew. Gossip, tale telling, back biting, and creating reputations for themselves, and others that make them appear very ugly and used outside. All of that mess generally comes from an inside source: something that has gone bad in there! Hurt feelings, broken heart, and damaged mind from too many verbal beatings they may have incurred themselves in the past. Either way, if you’ve ever read the book “Hurt People Hurt People” this concept would be more easily understood at a glance.

What do we do with those people? Do we open that black bin on the street and toss them in? Write them off as trash and worthless? This is where the process of recycling is so amazing! Are we any better than they? Of course we cannot change other people, and we may have to remove them from our lives if that is what it takes to maintain our own wellbeing, but we can look at ourselves, and that is what I intend to do right now…

What was I doing as this thought crossed my mind? I was rinsing out a used jar with hot water. Snap! Rinse that vessel out! Get it ready for a change! Toss out the yuck, and put yourself through a cleansing process. If we don’t work on ourselves, something is going to work on us. If there is one thing I have learned in this life it is that when we acknowledge that work needs to be done, and we do it, things are not quite as hard on us as it would be if we just let it go. (Let it go…let it goo) *chuckles*

After cleaning that vessel out, let the Master do the hard work. Melt, reshape, reform, recycle! Recycling may not be easy…in fact it takes work, and sometimes can be painful. But the end result can be such a thing of beauty! What may have started out as a regular milk jar may come back as a beautiful ornate glass piece that creates “ooh’s” and “Ahh’s” from people all around! Something that started out as a general space taker may come back as a functional piece of work that is useful in so many ways! The possibilities are ENDLESS! So when you feel ugly, nasty, used, hurt, abused, and just all around like trash DO NOT throw yourself out just yet!!

Go Green! Take that step to make it better! Rinse that mind! Pour the nasty out of that heart! Run outside into the woods and scream. Go to the riverside, or the Oceanside, lakeside, any shoreline, and just look at the vast amount of space out there…and remember you are bigger than your problems. You are greater than the pain that has driven the hole inside, making you feel like the garbage you are NOT.

There are SOOOOO many examples I could use, people who have lost loved ones, homes, and so on, who have taken all that pain, all the mess that has boiled inside, or that they kept inside for months and years, released it and let a change begin! Some have started movements for awareness of whatever stole their loved one. Some have started campaigns to help families who lost homes in disasters, and some just do what they can to help those in need…

What is your pain? What is your need? What have you buried inside, kept cooped up in the vessel you are? Empty it out, rinse, and place in the hands of the one who can make it new. And let yourself be made new!

I’m in the process of my own recycle. Man let me tell you, it has been an experience! And who knows when the product will be complete? But every moment has been well worth the sweat, tears, pain, joy, emotional moments (or weeks), growth, and maturity I am gleaning from the experience! If I had to do it over again (insert recycle pun here)…I would. And I’m sure I will.