Cherlyn Gatto 5/16/23 Cherlyn Gatto 5/16/23

I am dry. And I thirst for Him.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after You, O God (Psalm 42:1).

Today I am dry. And I thirst for Him.

I had a vision once when I was in Mexico. It happened in the middle of the night when I had gotten up to use the bathroom. The moon was full over the desert ranch as I passed the window, and its light spilled a cascade of silver on my newly planted garden below. The tilled soil. The baby plants. All of the day’s labor. And somewhere in my mind, wherever visions are planted, I was barefooted in that garden. The mud squished between my toes as I danced. I danced with the Lord, beneath the moon, my arms raised to Him. Free and unhindered like a child, with hope and joy bursting from my heart. And I said to Him, “If you will plant it and grow it, I will share it.”

We lived in a land of great need. Of hunger and poverty. Scarcity in life. And that little garden was what I had to give. It was my part to bring hope into the hurt others. And I was longing to share it.

Only, it never amounted to much on my watch. I am not so great with plants, and the hot sun, little rain, and sandy earth are hard to compete with. Nothing really grew. We got a few vegetables, that was it. Nothing to feed the hungry. To meet the deep need of those around us. And there has always been a little part of me that mourned that garden. I think I believed somewhere inside, I had made a promise to God I could never keep. That I had failed Him.

To know me is to understand. I am a child who seeks approval. Who desires to be recognized. Who tries very hard to be perfect. I am that child who hears a thousand good things yet crumbles underneath the weight of one bad. Not outwardly. No, you will not know it.

Writing is vulnerable for one like me. It opens me up to opinions, both good and bad. Accolades, acknowledgements, judgements. And I can try as hard as I can to please, but I will never gain approval from everyone. I will not be perfect to the world. And so, I will fail. I will ingest the highest praise and the lowest rebuke, all of it, and it will be a reflection, not of what I do, but who I am.

You say, but you are a child of God, you should gain your identity from Him. Yes, you are right. But often I do not. And criticism can devour me one whisper at a time.

So, my writing has taken its toll. Sometimes I don’t know what to say. Or I am afraid to say the wrong thing. One friend after reading something I wrote said to me, “I thought I knew you. Now I don’t know who you are at all.”

No, maybe not. Maybe I don’t know either.

My husband says to me, “You need to write more. It is a gift that God is using in people’s lives.” And I say in my heart, But I am empty. I have nothing to give unless the Lord gives it. Unless I hear from Him, I have nothing for anyone.

You say, that is the right perspective. But it wasn’t. You have to hear the I am empty part.

I have nothing to give.

I am a dry and weary land. And I thirst for Him.

We had a ladies’ retreat at the farm this last weekend. Twelve women in the upper room. The worship experience was overwhelming. One of the songs says:

Lord, take me back.

Back to the beginning.

When I was young.

Running through the fields with you.

…Running through the fields with You.

And He took me to that place I had met Him in the garden. Under the moon. When I had kicked off my shoes, threw off all care, and danced with Him. Where my dreams and hopes were birthed. That place I wanted to change my world. To have the greatest impact for Him.

He took me, also, to that same garden where I had failed Him. Where the soil was dry and cracked and did not bring life. That place where I had nothing to give. He took me there.

And He said to me: My child, don’t you see? It wasn’t about the plants in the ground. It wasn’t so small as that. It was about what I’ve planted in you. In you. I have done the work. In the soil of your heart, I have planted my garden.

I will nourish it. I will water it.

It will grow.

And you will share it.

On the way out of the retreat, through tears I shared with my dearest friend what the Lord had shown me. That it wasn’t about the garden in Mexico at all. That He had planted in the soil of my soul. And someday, I would know exactly how He was using it.

She turned to me and said, “Wasn’t it in Mexico, during that same exact time you had the vision of the garden, when the Lord gave you the gift of writing?”

Yes. It was.

So, my friend, here is a seedling planted just for you and just for me. The Gardener will tend to whatever it is He has planted in your heart. He will till the dry and cracked land. He will nourish it back to life. He will grow it to be all it is meant to be.

And you will share it with your world.

Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a fount of water springing up to eternal life (John 4:14).

Cherlyn Gatto 12/21/22 Cherlyn Gatto 12/21/22

In the Chaos

When I was a young mommy, I followed a woman online called The Fly Lady. I don’t know if she’s still around. But she was one of those wise people who taught young women how to manage their days. How to organize their households. How to get through the whirling chaos that comes with infants and toddlers and home life in those early years. Her advice was simple. Start with the kitchen sink. Just the kitchen sink. Begin there. Wash the dishes. Scrub the basin. Bleach it. Dry it until it shines.

Well, that’s fine. That’s easy. But what about the rest of my house? What about the scattered toys? The clogged toilet? The muddy carpet? What about the sleepless nights? The cranky husband? The crying baby? What about all those things I don’t know how to manage? What about those?

Just start with the sink. Clean the sink.

I think in my younger years I understood part of the truth. The practical side. I realized that in the midst of the craziness, I could manage cleaning the sink. It was a small part I could take some control over. I could do that. I would be able to claim a tiny part of my world. Accomplish something, even small. And move on from there. Like eating an elephant one bite at a time. It was a small bite, but it helped me begin the climb.

But as I stand here at my kitchen sink thirty years late, I think about The Fly Lady. And I realize maybe I didn’t understand the deeper meaning of her lesson—maybe she didn’t either. And maybe her advice wasn’t just about managing a household. Because today, my first grand baby of six months old lies in a hospital bed after a terrible fall. We’re waiting for news from the neurosurgeon and neurologist. For the 4-hour MRI results. For the seizures to stop. For him to open his eyes and be normal again. For some tiny control over our shattered lives.

And all I can do is stand at the kitchen sink. I stand and I weep.

What about the living room where his toys are? What about Christmas and his presents under the tree? What about all the what-ifs and should-haves that torture my mind? Where do I go when all around me is a reminder that just days ago, moments ago, we celebrated and laughed and planned, never knowing the tragedy right around the corner? What do I do with that, Lord?

And through blurry tears, I wash one fork.

One single fork.

Because that’s about all I can do.

The pain and the chaos is too great.

And thinking about anything else will bring me crashing down.

So, I scrub the fork. And then a bowl. I wash them, dry them, and put them away.

But in this moment, I understand the Fly Lady’s lesson a little bit deeper. And give it eternal breath. Because maybe it’s not so much about managing my household, but managing my soul. Because I can do the next right thing. I can take the tiniest step, the smallest part. I can do that. I can wash the dishes. Dry the sink. Fold the towel. Cry the tears.

But I can’t calm the waters.

I can’t silence the storm.

Only Jesus can do that.

In this empty, fragile, chaotic place, only He can sustain me.

And in that quiet space alone at the kitchen sink, that still moment when the warm water washes over my hands and I take up that next fork, I find just a sliver of courage, a moment of victory, to give it back to Him.

Cherlyn Gatto 1/24/21 Cherlyn Gatto 1/24/21

A Stripping Away

I’ve been off for a while. The pandemic and all. I just didn’t know how to speak into it. So much pain and heartache and loss. Isolation. A re-routing on life, I guess. Maybe a stripping away.

I sat around the table last night with my kids. We talked and laughed, not about the things today, but stories of yesterday. My youngest son shared one of his earliest memories. He was two, and we were packing up for Mexico. Such a vivid memory for a little one. He remembers looking out the window at our garage sale one week before we left. All of our belongings scattered across the lawn. When he saw another kid pick up his race track to buy, he ran outside and tried to hand him something else—a different toy, so he wouldn’t have to part with his favorite track, his favorite matchbox cars. But I stopped my little guy because we just couldn’t take it along, and I let the sale go through. He had to let go. He was young for such a grand lesson.

Sometimes life doesn’t feel like “letting go” but “stripping away.” It sometimes feels as if we have no say in it. The decision doesn’t seem to be ours.

That day at the garage sale, we got rid of everything that wouldn’t fit in our van and travel trailer. With a family of seven, trust me, it didn’t feel like much came with us. And each of my children remembers something they lost that day. But we packed in everything we could—everything we thought we needed—waved to our best friends down the driveway, and drove 2000 miles to our language school in Texas.

I remember too the day we left Texas one year later with as much Spanish under our belts as we could grab hold of and the whole world open to what lay ahead for our family in Mexico. Our last stop before pulling out of the school was the bodega where our things had been in storage. For a good two hours, we worked in the sweltering heat to shove our belongings back in the places they should have fit. Believe me, my husband is the best packer around. If he can’t puzzle it in, it can’t be puzzled.

Yet, at the end, there were still six plastic bins on the sidewalk.

“We can’t take these,” he said.

“We have to.” There was no bending in my mind. No compromise. Not now. We had already given away so much. This was the bare minimum.

“We can’t,” he said. Period.

I sat down on one of those bins and cried. It poured out from some untapped reservoir inside of me. The anger first. I already had nothing. Why more? God, will you take everything from me? I cried, not for the “things”—children’s clothing and pots and pans—but for the hope. The dreams. All that those bins somehow represented inside of me. My family’s chance to start again. To have a home. A new life together.

We took those bins to the school’s thrift shop. One by one the woman lifted the lid and explored the items inside. Oh, I had needed that … I had a place for those, I thought. Like my two-year-old trying to hold onto his race track that day, I had to let go. The woman smiled at all the items she could re-home, and we left.

I think I might have cried to the border.

And we entered a land so foreign to us. People we didn’t know. A language we could barely speak. Unspoken rules we kept breaking. When our first team came down from our home church—our friends, faces we knew and loved—I remember the sheer panic I felt as they boarded the plane to leave. Please, take me with you. Don’t leave me behind. When our friends left, I experienced a whole new level of stripping. Not things, but people I loved. And I felt very alone.

One day, a man came from the states. I don’t even remember his name or why he was there. But I remember him. I stood with him at the ranch while activity whirled around us. A team was digging a trench. They were laughing despite the dirt and grime and heat. The man told me about a ministry he was involved in back home. He said the old-timers would sit around the fire and talk about the good ole times. The inception. The beginning. The glory days. The days that were rough and hard and took everything from you. He said how he wished he could have been a part of the stories, of the life when it all began.

Then the man turned and looked at me and said, “Someday, you’ll be sitting around a fire talking about the ranch. Because, right now, right here … these are the glory days.”

You know what? He was right.

But sometimes we can’t see it in the moment. Sometimes, we just feel the loss. We feel like we don’t have a choice. That things are happening around us we have no control of. And every day something else is taken from us. But often we can’t see from where we’re standing. We don’t know what’s just around the corner.

And what we think is a stripping away … is actually a new beginning.