When I was in Italy, one thing I heard over and over from locals and guides – was how Italians recycled – everything. I’m not talking here about aluminum, plastic and paper. No – Italian recycling has a much larger history.

Ever wonder why there are so many holes in the part of the colosseum still standing? All the metal was taken out in later years to be used as weapons in war. That is Italian recycling– old things, or parts of old things, garbled and blended together to make the beautiful cacophony of history and present that meld together today and change constantly into tomorrow.

I feel like that is what my life is. This blended beautiful noise that all comes down to a glorious God who has given me an amazing gift of grace that I could never earn, that I don’t deserve, and a life that I want to live in total thanksgiving of His love for me.

I know it is surprising because I seem so young – but I have a lot of years of history. A building built stone by stone. Some broken, some burnt, some perfect and hole, but especially from those critical years, built with lots of metal in the foundation – metal of bad choices, disastrous decisions, pain. It was hard cold metal that held me together but in very wrong ways, metal that turned me hard and cold in the process. An awe inspiring building on the outside but filled with secrets and shame and cold dark pain on the inside. A building that appeared indestructible but was actually crumbling with every added weight.

And much like the death that marked the inside of the colosseum – I was dying inside. I was attacked by everything I kept pouring into my life, until I could no longer face the lions and the gladiators, and I screamed out for help.

And in that dark death, I found light. I encountered Christ – really encountered Him. A heart change, a life change – for the first time I felt life and hope. For the first time I saw life beyond the massive cold hard walls I had built around me. I found the love I had been seeking so hard – and found peace in true unconditional acceptance. My God who created me, loved me even as I kept piling the cold hard steel of sin into my life with each bad decision. My God who gave me a way out – unearned, undeserved grace – sacrificed for me on the cross even before I was born.

Ephesians 3:17-19 “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all that fullness of God”.

 1 John 4:16 “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.”

The building took years to create, and it took years to become a ruin – a memory of the past that was. As stones crumbled and the cold hard metal was slowly removed. Years of getting to know the God – the light – outside the walls. There were definitely times I retreated back in, a little scared that the new world was just too good for me. There were times I went back and put some of the cold bitterness back in my foundation. But eventually it became easier to live the new, forgiven, grace filled life – joy filled life – God has always intended for me. Much like the colosseum today – only the empty shell remained. No longer holding in the death and destruction – only silent memories of what had been. No longer the center of action, but a part of the bigger picture. Only by trusting fully in God – giving my life, my heart, my whole faith – into my heavenly perfect Father could the walls come down. No longer my effort, but His love that rebuilt a life of hope out of the destruction.

 Psalm 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

Isaiah 41:10 “So do not fear, for I am with you, do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

And here is where the recycling comes in. All that cold, hard sin that used to hold me in darkness was removed and melted into weapons for the new battle I had joined. They became God words on my heart that help me stand strong when the temptations of the world try to take me back to the past. God’s love and hope on my life that help me attack new challenges and trials as they arise. God’s truth that helps answer all satan’s lies that constantly pursue me.

That cold darkness became a new story – a story that is a weapon to help others as they fight to find the same hope and joy outside of the walls that hold them in. By reusing what once destroyed me to show other hurting hearts that there is a path out, my weapons became something much greater than myself. Because my story was never just about me – but about all the lost sheep desperately striving for their shepherd’s voice.

My Father has made me new. Nothing other than God in my life, nothing that I have done, not my own effort – fully God. He has made me new from the old that was. He has recycled my story from death and destruction to life and hope.

1 John 1:7 “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here!”

The old never fully gone, instead melted together into the new landscape. A sign to others locked in their old that there is a new waiting for them – just waiting for their hearts to break down the walls. For them to do the hard work of relying on God and removing the cold hard past.

My ruins recycled into God’s purpose.

My history recycled into His story in my life.