Barren

Cathy Maziarz takes a journey into the desert … both in the physical and spiritual sense.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert. (Matthew 4:1a)

The year was 1998, I had just finished college and the Lord led me on a journey into the desert. I was called to the arid sands of New Mexico, to a small Catholic mission on the Navajo Indian Reservation called Saint Bonaventure Indian and Mission School. I served as the middle-school math and science teacher to a group of children who lived in one of the poorest counties in the country. It did not take me long to experience the harshness of the desert … and the real-life definition of barren.

Through a land of wastes and ravines,
A land of drought and darkness, a land which no one crosses, where no one dwells. (Jeremiah 2:6b)

On the Reservation, I learned that the desert is a place that is void of life. It is barren. It is incapable of producing. The minimal plants and animals that call the desert home have been able to adapt to the lack of water. I learned that those who call the desert home do not say they are “living in the desert,” but rather “surviving.” I came to know the Navajo, or the Diné, which means “The People.” They were a beautiful and forgotten people that were surviving on seven gallons of water a day … and who still are. (The average American household uses 80 to 100 gallons of water a day.) A people who adapted and accepted the struggle. A people whose physical wells were barren, but whose spiritual wells were filled with living water.

They did not thirst when he led them through dry lands;
Water from the rock he set flowing for them; he cleft the rock, and waters welled forth. (Isaiah 48:21)

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My students gave me, a first-year teacher, more than I could ever give them: they allowed me into their homes, their culture, and their hearts. In return, I gave them my faith, my knowledge, and my love. I was drawing from a well of their living waters, and them from mine. The desert had given me a purpose … they became my purpose. The desert soon transformed before my eyes. I saw beauty in the poverty, the dry cracked earth, and the forgottenness of our first Americans. I saw God paint the sky in a pallet of the most beautiful sunset colors … coloring the greys of poverty. His golden rays of sunlight danced upon the mesas … I saw joy and peace in their circumstance. God filled my heart … it now beats for the Navajo children … a drumbeat that will not forget.

Sarai was barren; she had no child. (Genesis 11:30)

Fifteen years later, the Holy Spirit led me into another desert … one that I have been wandering through for the past ten years of my married life. My body is barren ... unable to produce. It is void of life. As I struggle with infertility, God has given me the grace to realize that in all His ultimate wisdom He has given me this desert to walk through for a purpose. It has taken time to realize this; I have wandered with anger in my heart, jealousy of friends with children, and low self-esteem.

As I did on the Reservation, I have come to see the beauty in my desert … to appreciate the sky that God painted just for me; a sky that colors my sadness. I have learned to dance in the golden rays of His sunlight … to find joy and peace. He has filled my heart with children … my students, godchildren, nieces, and nephews. Children who are not mine, but whom I have helped to nurture and guide.

Click to tweet:
God uses the deserts of our lives, these voids, to prepare us, to make us stronger. #CatholicMom

Whether it is infertility, the loss of a loved one, the struggle with mental illness, or drug abuse … we may be in a desert. But God uses the deserts of our lives, these voids, to prepare us, to make us stronger. We will find the beauty … for when everything is taken away, we are left with God … our living water … and we are barren no longer.

Prayer:

Dear God, I will lift my eyes to You and drink from Your living water … no matter the barren deserts I journey through.

“But whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14)

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