I have thought so much about the word ‘standards’ lately.  I realize that this word keeps us floundering and a bit uncomfortable.  It’s a word that seems to be scarcely used by the world and seldom by the church.  The first meaning in the dictionary for the word is: “something considered by an authority or by general consent as a basis of comparison; an approved model.” Wow.  When I pull this into the structured belief of Christian living, I find my answer is still that God is the “authority” and that God is the “approved model.”  I understand this and yet I spend many weekends wondering where many of the standards that make Him the authority are and how come we don’t live like he’s the model?

I went for a walk this morning and started talking with God about standards.  I decided to blog on it.  Maybe someone cares, maybe they don’t but I could not help but start asking this simple question:  Where have the standards of Christ like living run off to?  Of course I already know the answer to this but I’m propelled to hang it out there anyway! In my own journey I am fully aware of the kind of standards I uphold & live by.  I also am aware of the standards that I have let go of because I got lazy holding steady and started believing God deals out grace like a deck of cards!

I write this and cringe because the people I tend to turn from the most are those that get a bit religious and want to defend God from those not holding to many standards!  They start throwing judgment mud!  I hate judgment mud.  I have had to wipe it off my heart and get convicted when I lean down and pick it up to throw.  No mud here and if you’re really religious, move on.

I do write from my thoughts and my thoughts come out of my seeking the Lord for answers.  We all need answers right? My thoughts are random and some have points.  Lately my thoughts have been kind of sad.  I get sad about what I am hearing and seeing happen in this community called church. I am tired of hearing about another young marriage collapsing in divorce and another Christian not being able to survive without some addiction.  I am sad that some pastors, leaders, artists and evangelist in churches and communities all around seem to have become passive to sin and reluctant in repentance.  I’m sad that abortion is on the rise because another generation has not been raised to believe that waiting is wisdom and purity is power.  I am sad that TV shows make stars out of teenage motherhood and we all witness another generation being raised in brokenness.  Yeah, I am sad.  I am sad to have to encourage the number of broken young women I do who are pressured by their saved boyfriends for pre-material sex and when they give in, they feel at war with belief.

I spend hours praying and singing over people who hurt and cannot trust God long enough with their ministry to take a break and get healed from their own mistakes.  I’m tired of feeling like I have to defend the sanctity of living a sober life with those that can’t live without indulgence. I am sad and tired and tired and sad of Shepard’s who don’t choose to father and keep accountable those who need accountability out of fear of tithe changes and offended sheep.  In fact, the whole art of mothering and fathering is rarely found as a need in many churches and we are more sensitive to seekers then we are to sin. There should be a balance to this.  We should have balance because Christ brings us this.  I know not in all church communities, but I have been seeing this more and more. Grace gets handed out like candy at Halloween.  I’m confused and sad about it all.  I want to see the Kingdom come.  No, not religion, the Kingdom!

I am trusting God to find it, and learn from it.  You see when I disagree with alcohol filled tour buses I am stamped as “so yesterday” and not in touch or “one who lives with too many rules.”  Yet, the amount of conversations I’ve had with youth about how they saw their Christian icons partaking in drinking and smoking being the reason they stopped walking with God, states my point.  It does make me want to talk about how to reach a standard that irritates those who want to live without them.  When will we see freedom come from obeying God instead of convincing ourselves pleasing our flesh is okay?  If you have found a balance to it, that’s amazing.  I just have not seen many who carry strength to partake in the world without becoming more like it.  Sure there are some exceptions. I’ve experienced those too.  There is a fine line though.  You must have great strength because the pull to join the world is a tree of dangling-fruit; the life of Christ is a long winding road!

There should be a higher standard for those of us in ministry right?  Right. Why would you want to trust a saved thief with your purse if he still robs banks for a living?  What makes him different?  Balance please. Balance is not a debatable subject.  We all need it.  I need to stop watching crappy TV shows when I can’t sleep and grab a good book or pray instead.  I need to trust God more and not the Ice cream in the freezer!  I need to teach my son to believe in miracles even if I have never seen one. I need to love and forgive when I am betrayed and abandon. Balance comes when we find the equality in our ability and hold steady.

I sit alone with God a lot and talk about much.  The main stuff we talk about is mom stuff, kid stuff, worship related stuff and the church.  When we talk about the church I cry a lot. I’ve been in church my whole life. I watched my father preach as a kid from many a pulpit. I knew in his face there was deep devotion to God and to Holiness.  So, of course I gleaned this behavior.  I was told, taught and counseled to make a stand to be pure and right as I followed God.  Along the way though I found a great balance in many things.  Sure, screw-ups came with being human, but with my spirit following hard after God it makes me want to be like him.  Holy.  Holy for me isn’t perfection but it’s a push toward the hope of it.  I want to shine.  Don’t you?  If you don’t why did you choose God?  I could quote tons of scripture here but I’m not going to because you know what I mean.

As I walk though this life I have all the grace for the lost and unsaved but weep more for the saved that act lost.  You must measure yourself first before you measure others, right?  The rules and disciplines we set before ourselves in life with Christ are implemented to carry us through all God informs us in scripture, is going to happen. If I forget to live by principle and rightness I will fail to represent what I live for well.  If I fail to represent him I stop being lit and become dark.  Remember having balance is not being lukewarm.  Lukewarm gets spit out.

I see so much and hold that pointing finger at myself more then anyone else.  There have been moments I say nothing and moments I say it all.  Sometimes my timing is lousy and sometimes it is perfect.  I don’t have a drinking/smoking issue but I want to learn to be patient.  If I continue acting like waiting 5 minutes is like waiting 50 I’m going to offend someone I could have encouraged.  Does that matter to me? Yes. It matters because I set my mind on becoming like Him.  Isn’t that what we are doing here?  If you like to cuss and call it cool well, out of the mouth, the heart speaks.  I didn’t write that, He inspired it to be written.

Holiness is not literally wearing a white robe with bells and pomegranates dangling from it.  But, do you know what those symbols in scripture mean?  The meaning behind those robes, the meaning behind those dangling symbols?  It’s a road to holiness for sure.  I want to see God come to show us the way.  I don’t want Him to come in and take us out of the way.

Standards are not set or made to make us miserable. I just kind of think they are there to make us look more like a King.

~Rita

He was my 5:15AM cab ride to the Austin airport a few weeks ago.  He was early and I was relieved.  I’d rather be early for a flight then ‘panic stricken late’ where all of my ‘on time-have to get home’ issues hit my nerves after an event is over.  I didn’t ask his name and I don’t think he even mentioned it. He mentioned everything else that painted a picture about his life.  It is funny how someone’s life can be summed up in a 20-minute cab ride to the airport.  I have thought about his story ever since and have tossed many questions back at God about those images he painted of his childhood.

When it’s that early in the morning I am not chatty and I tend to focus on the first cup of coffee that is going to keep me awake long enough to fall asleep on the plane ride home. This particular morning I was miffed that although the Marriott advertises they “Brew Starbucks Coffee” the desk attendant led me to a thermal jug of what tasted like Folgers.  Who cares. Anything will do at 5:15am with 3 hours of sleep!  So, there I am clutching my drab coffee and climb into my early cab. My cab guy offered his life story in a response to a question I had after he talked about the chilly Austin morning.  “Are you an Austin original?”  I asked.  That was it.  Not meaning to, that one question opened up his box of memories and I sat in the back seat pondering a life left in many ways, untouched by the presence of God.

He was quick to point out that his father was a complete *%$)*&* and that he was relieved he had died years before!  He went on to say that after his fathers passing the doctor explained that much of his fathers rage was probably due to the heart attack he suffered when cab guy was in the 3^rd grade.  Cab guy said that prior to that heart attack, his dad was a kind soft hearted man.  He spoke of a father who loved his kids deeply.  After that heart attack he said his father beat him every day.  A complete turning from what he knew.

His father was a military man so they moved around ending up  in Waco prior to Austin.  He had 3 brothers and 1 sister.  He described his mother being beat at the hands of her angry husband .  His mother was too weak to protect her children and succumb to cancer years after her husband’s own death.  The sister was a heroin addict and stole all her mother’s savings from the small pension she lived on, leaving her mother with nothing but a mobile home that was unpaid for.  Cab guy and one brother were living in that mobile home at present. The heroin addict sister died of breast cancer but because of her addiction, never even knew she had it.  Another drug addicted brother committed suicide.

I wondered why he felt the need to tell me all of this.  This man’s dark sad life with no mention of God until he says the familiar statement;  “We went to church every Sunday. My dad was a deacon and made us go to church every Sunday.  On the way to church he told us if we ever talked about our lives at home, he’d kill us.”  So, God became the duty and not the freedom.  Church became another place to hide the truth and not grab a hold of it.  Cab guy talk about forgiveness in the same breath while dropping the f-bomb and every other bomb you can drop when your life goes untouched by love.  He said he’d never married because he refused to put a wife through his anger issues, which flared up quite often.  Like father like son.

I felt in some trance when we pulled up to the US-Airways sign and I handed him cash that held his life in a fragile state of nothingness.  He turned and said, “I don’t know why I just told you about my life, but well, there you have it.”  Cab guy retrieved my overnight bag from the trunk and handed it to me.  I thanked him and said some retarded thing like, “Bless You.”  Bless You?  Seriously?   Feeling liquid idiot-haze rush over my brain I walked inside the terminal and checked myself into my flight.  Checked myself in to go home to a clean house free of F-bombs and fast food wrappers lying all over the floor and would throw my arms around a little boy whom I house a love for that sometimes leaves my heart feeling like it’s going to explode out of my chest!  Then I talked with God.  I sat down waiting for my flight and thought about cab guy and prayed for cab guy. Mainly I asked God how cab guy ever stood a chance?  I saw cab guy in another life.  Another life where in the midst of that toughness he’d found God and turned toward everything opposite of hate. I saw him at his rage infested fathers side telling his dad he forgave him and leading his family to God with his own testimony of healing.  The eight tiny hoop earing’s in his ears were gone and he was no longer wearing the filthy overall shorts that covered his huge belly.  He was healthier but still played Santa Claus every year at the church Christmas Bazaar.  He was married and spoke of his wife like God hung the moon just for her.  I wanted cab guy to know that even in his late fifty’s he could see change.  A man who told me in that cab that his last two brothers would be dead if not for an act of God.  So he credits the almighty for keeping his brother’s alive but they all still live in places having nothing to do with God at all.

I felt like a witnessing failure but had no idea what to say with a life gone so bad that even I could not see how he was supposed to be rescued.  I just fell silent.  I know that maybe that ride was to get me thinking about the lost in a different way, praying more yes, but pondering the depth to the lengths the enemy goes to keep God’s goodness in hiding.  I hate the devil.  I hate the lie that says there is no way out and the way in disappointment leads us to bitter waters. Cab guy is one of millions who have spent their lives under generational cursing and habitual pain.  That reality stings me.  God came for cab guy.  He longs to see cab guy free.  So I’m praying.  That maybe a ride in the cab was a chance meeting to pray for a man on his last leg that he would choose to trade them over for new ones.  I’d love to chat with cab guy again in heaven and hear him maybe tell me what happened after that day and how God came down and showed him what a loving father looks like.

Say a prayer today for Cab Guy, or the Check-Out Lady, or Bank Teller Guy, or Starbuck Guy.  I think we can pull in lives lost with words of prayer.  Seriously, I think we can.

I didn’t go to prom my senior year in high school.  I loved the novelty of it and wanted to go but I wasn’t asked by anyone and I certainly didn’t want to take one of my brothers to say I went.  I wanted to be asked by someone that wanted to be said yes to by me.  At the time I passed it off as no big deal.  I was too busy for prom.  The reality was I wanted to say I had the prom experience.  Don’t we all?  I graduated high school in the summer of 1985.  The summer of 1984 I won the crown in my small town of, Miss Lake Elizabeth.  That’s not saying much.  There were two other contestants running against me and one of them was my sister Roxanne.  I was louder, more obnoxious and a rambling ball of talent waiting to be discovered.  It didn’t matter if I weighed more and wasn’t as gorgeous as my sister.  She was quiet and shy as well as being known as a beanpole (our neighbor used to call her “bones hanging from a tree”).  Although my sister had a great soprano voice she had the nervous habit of breaking down into huge sobs when she did solos for church offerings.  I knew I had the crown when for her talent she sang a John Denver tune and started sobbing in the middle of it.  For my talent, I wore a red wig and belted out the lead song from the Broadway show, Annie.   Too bad Broadway wasn’t there to see it.  I would have been on a plane to New York the next day.

There are things I regret not doing in my life and things I look back on and cringe at acting like an idiot in.  I would have been a perfect prom date; I wasn’t so great as community queen. There are things I dreamed of doing as a young adult.   I still want to go to Italy one day and just ride one of those bikes with a basket in the front on some romantic cobble stone street. You know, the basket with the whole wild flower bouquet draping out of it and the fresh Baguette loaf sticking out of a paper sack?  I want to ride the train through all of Europe and meet fascinating people.  I want to run an orphanage in Africa and live there watching Justice play barefoot with all the kids who all look just like him for a change.

I have chosen the road though of no regrets.  I live these days with hope, yearning and expect more hope and yearning.  I think of God more during the hours in the day then I ever have and I have become quite at home with silence.  I watch less TV and was relieved when Oprah said good-bye to everyone in the world.  I wait for much of what I have always waited for but I wait with life instead of just a pulse.  That’s saying a ton.  I write now.  I write instead of talk.  I ponder instead of process out loud and I think it helps in pushing regrets out the door and life in my house. I’m careful who I hang around and who I give my heart in friendship to.  I encourage strangers more and find myself interceding in the grocery store with great ease.  I hear God talk and watch even the little things he says about what and who to pray for come into being.  Some of those revelations are sad truths and some glorious miracles.

There are goals we set up to achieve and there is nothing wrong with that.  There are keys we want to fit into doors we must open and there is nothing wrong with that.  There are weddings to plan and babies to be born.  There are jobs to connect with and houses to build.  There are hits and misses everyday in our lives and we each walk them out according to our convictions and compromises.   To regret, keeps us focused on what was and we will never be satisfied with the “what is” and certainly not have passion for the “what is to come”.  I want the passion.  So, I shall not live with regret.  I didn’t go to my high school prom.  So what.  I shall dance with my son on his wedding day, or better yet, on mine!

Remembering the crown!

Something happened on the way to trusting God.  I do not know that I fully expected what I found or what I asked to find in the process, but when I started my discovery the one thing I refused to do was turn back, regardless of what lay ahead.  The past 2 months of 2011 have been interesting, to say the least. I have been in a swirl of rebirth in many ways. I found a joy that although not complete yet, was a profound place of peace for the present journey.

I had major surgery 6 years ago. An army of fibroid tumors camped out in my uterus and stayed for a number of years until I figured out how to find insurance to pay for the very expensive surgery needed to remove them. I had just adopted my son Justice so there was a bit of irony in the midst of that season for sure. I was deeply relieved that the scare to my childbearing ability was saved by finally having that surgery and finding a great doctor who did an amazing job saving my uterus.  I recovered like a champ and forged ahead in the hope for my future. Waiting for God to bring along a spouse can be kind of like waiting for rain to hit the Death Valley Desert!  (Can I get an AMEN from all the single women?)  I have however, entrusted my life to the Lord and I preferred his choices way above my own.

In the years since that time I have continued hoping and dreaming for marriage, another adoption and of course, to bear a child. I have loved hearing the voice of God tutor, instruct and direct my life in this new found season of writing, traveling and recording.  I’ve blogged a bit about that here on the site. Generally, I feel like I found my way back to the rightness in relating with the Lord and finding again the balance of how to walk righteously in both personal and spiritual areas. Trying to balance motherhood with the career isn’t a picnic but it is a million times rewarding on both sides.  I have become better at living open wide and out loud.  It has felt liberating to empty the pockets of my life with what I thought was lasting and real, hand it all back to God and have him hand me a new direction and an obvious trust.

The beauty of it all is that with every turn there is a statement of faith waiting to be sounded out.  I’d wish I chosen to trust God more in my youth.  I guess in many ways, I did.  Some forms of trust though are corners we find ourselves backed into.  The hilarity is that most of those corners I even prayed to find myself in!  So, alas, I admit, trust felt good.  Although a scary and unknown territory at times, I felt sudden relief.  I finally witnessed the spring as I watched winter melt. I had successfully finished 3 huge projects in recording, started a worship school, launched another women’s conference, signed a major record deal and survived some very tough betrayals.  I wrote a song years ago called Worth it All.  Don’t think for a minute that God does not use those words that felt needy then to become more of a need later on.  I think that is quite prophetic actually.

I found God to be good.  Yes, all the time.  In August of 2010 while on a plane headed home for a family camping trip to Seattle I became quite ill.  I knew something was wrong but what else can a person do when feeling sick at 35 thousand feet?  Trust God that I just had the flu! By the time we landed I was taken by ambulance to a small hospital nearby where they discovered a cyst had burst around my left ovary.  I think inside I knew something was wrong.  I mean, there was pain most the time but I trusted the words of my doctor telling me that she didn’t expect those evil fibroids to return.  I went back to my doctor when I got home and test were ordered. I was traveling too much to take them and canceled and rebooked several times, until recently.   In my quiet time one morning in January the Lord asked me to trust him and go back to take the tests. (remember my blog about the skin cancer? Yeah, I’m still learning)  So, there I was sitting in the docs office as she read to me my results.  Another furious camp of fibroids had now pretty much destroyed my uterus and some other foreign mass was taking over the left ovary.  I kind of just stared at her. She told me that she was going to take me to surgery very soon to remove the uterus, that failing ovary and run test to make sure the mass was not cancerous.  Yeah, that pretty much was what I now call, “The day that sucked big time.”

Sometimes trusting God does not let you process your situation.  Sometimes trust is a rush of placing it all straight away into his hands with no questions asked.  I didn’t call the prayer hot line or plan a fast.  Maybe I should have.  I just didn’t.  I just looked over at God and nodded.  Well, of course I freaked out and cried in-between but honestly, I had the reality of nowhere to go but to God.  Trusting God doesn’t always look like healing, hope and daisy’s.  It comes with a strain and an ache but ends with pure relief and peace.This isn’t written to make a great blog. It really is to bring forth a hope in those that find themselves more moved to fight trust then to ride with it.  We can spend our whole lives trying to trust God. I am now way more concerned that He trust me.

I remember watching Justice sleep that night of “the day that sucked big time.”  I had no idea what lay ahead for us.  I didn’t know if I had a fight on my hands and I certainly didn’t want him to suffer watching me fight it.  So I sat there for a long time and just reviewed my life and my love for God.  I can tell you that I have never felt so right with God as in those moments.

My first DIVE school of 2011 started 4 days later.  I had scheduled the surgery for the day after the school ended.  As my students were flying in my doctor called to tell me that I had to go into surgery immediately!  The scare for cancer heightened by a ready to rupture ovary!  Superwoman that I am had to fight confusion and turn my situation into a  teaching tool.  My friend Jenn Johnson was coming in as our guest speaker and I called her to tell her that the week was going to be a doozey!  Jenn is so full of faith and certainty, she declared some amazing things and just voiced peace.  Peace came again.  So, while my school was in session and handed off to Jenn to teach it, I went ahead and checked myself into the hospital and trusted my life into the results of Gods.  Something happened on the way to trusting God.  I found many things in those moments.  I found out that pastors, (because I have the best) are really warriors in disguise.  I found out that real true friends are the ones that stick closer than a brother. I realized that doctors are anointed and the strangers I just met and mentored were my choir of angels.

There were hilarious moments I apparently had while on some awesome medication and I guess felt the need to witness and encourage the nurses to never give up on their dreams.  I loved hearing that about myself.  Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. I have felt such abundance in God. The test results came back completely benign and cancer free.  That relief breathtaking. Yet, I left without one thing I had loved most about being a girl. I was no longer worthy of saying I had a womb.  I was now truly barren.  I pondered for hours the years of feeling that Isaiah 54 was my scripture to teach.  How do we sing like we have something when we do not?  How many women’s events did I teach that in? How many songs did I write about the barren womb becoming whole and productive?  It’s a lot to think about and there are many things I do not know how to verbalize quite yet. What I know is that although trusting God with what comes is not an easy journey, it is the best way to walk it out.  It is actually a miraculous way to walk it out.

Our nations money declares that we TRUST IN GOD.  The sad truth is that most of us don’t even know how.  The quandary isn’t how we got like that but more why we stay like that?  I have been stunned seeing so many Christians need to stay in control while their lives and our world gets more out of it.  I held onto my stuff too tightly and when I finally said enough, everything changed.  It’s no picnic but it’s a powerful sense of freedom that’s found when you are no longer in control and God is.

My up hill journey now is to live with what God allowed.  How do I do that?  Trust.  There will be days I long for a do-over and those that I will not think much about it.  There will also be days I will call Jenn Johnson and have her pray for me in faith for a new uterus just cuz God can!  There will be many days I simply just praise the Lord. Mostly though, I will walk on, finish the race (cancer free I might add)!  I will gaze at my beautiful boy because every 5 minutes he stuns me.  I will write a few thousand more songs that may or may not touch Nations but for sure will touch the Lord’s heart.  I will love and be loved by those God sets around me because I’m worth that.  I will drive my niece, whose living with me, crazy leaving notes about her stupid flat iron being left on, and watch my Gladiolas bloom in the back yard.  I will push my heart over and over toward this amazing God who is worthy of all my thoughts and stares.  You see, something  happens when you trust God.  You get more of him and less of you.

Trust Him today.  At least give it a try.

Rita

Dive School February 2011

Okay, so I need to get this off my chest.  Frankly, because I’m bothered by it and because I have a voice to try and change the way it is.

It has to do with adoption.   It has to do with the beauty of it and the stupidity of others and their inability to see the depth in it.  I might sound strong here and a bit fierce (because I  kind of am), but that’s not to be mistaken for bitter or drunk.  I am neither of those things I assure you.  I write this out for all the other families who have adopted their babies that have encountered what I have strolling through society and the world and this greater community called The Church.

I love the church.  I am the church.  But, I have never seen such a uniformed community, with regard to adoption.   So, I write this for the ears and hearts out there that are saved, gospel believing holy rollers, denominational and non-denominational God Chasers and all the other fire-proof card holders who declare the love of God out-loud but have never yet had the revelation of adoption. Adoption is not a feeling or an emotion! It isn’t there because of barrenness or a need to serve God.  It happens because of those things but its not dependant on it.  It is a glorious action and the literal act that Christ did for us when he died on the cross and called us “adopted sons and daughters.”

Six years ago my life radically changed because of the word ADOPTION.  I was able to adopt and I did it as a single woman with no husband in sight!  Yes, I felt the Lord’s timing on it and yes it was the scariest thing I’ve done alone.  I had planned my life out and being a single mother was not in the plan.  I was certain I would be married, love being pregnant, have a quiver of children and be the president of the La Leche League by the time I was 30.  I also have always known I would adopt children.  It was not a “feeling” but rather a destiny.

At 38 I found myself having conversations with God about adoption and 6 months later Justice Zane Springer was born.   Some of my friends and family members thought that I had this biological clock ticking and that I was making something happen because I was disappointed by God and cloaking my decision with spiritual roderick.  My thoughts?  Who cares what others think! I was obeying the Lord!  I also knew that anything that requires obedience always requires cost!  Emotional, physical and spiritual cost!    I was scared out of my mind but excited to follow God down a path of unknowns.  I have read the scriptures enough to know that there was NO WAY God could turn from the widow or the orphan and I knew that he would sustain me.  I had no idea that I would fall into the knowledge of what he truly did for me in allowing me to call him “Father.”

I had become a mother by way of what I began to hear classified as the “unnatural” way. Unnatural?  Give me a break.  When I adopted I finally felt natural!  I felt normal and full of what maybe left humanity in the Garden of Eden.  I felt right and even righteous for the first time in my life.  I felt selfless and good.  I felt humbled and at a loss for words, so I cried for months.  I didn’t care what sex the baby was or if there ended up being  health issues at the birth.  I was all in.  Good or bad.  Well, I had no idea that what I was so at ease about held such opinion for others.

The first struggle for many was that I am white and my son is black!  Yep, you read it right. Let me say it again in case you thought you didn’t have your glasses on!  I am Caucasian and my son was born truly African American!  Actually my son was born a shade of purple blue because the umbilical cord was around his neck!  But when he was rubbed up and squawking likes a chicken he turned the color of night.  I’m not a dark candy chocolate lover but if my son were edible, I would have consumed him whole!  He could have been orange and I would have felt the same way!

When Justice was an infant I was talking to another  christian woman about her inability to conceive a child.  I lit up like a Christmas tree and told her to adopt!  Her response was this, “We want a child that looks like us.”  Hmmmm.  Okay, I get it.  Really I do. But, I am so glad that God provided an opportunity for me to become his daughter, even though I looked nothing like him and yet he said that through loving him and knowing him I end up looking more and more like him.  Hear me, I understand why we choose to have babies to look like us and again, I would have loved to have one floating around in my guts for 10 months.  All I am saying is that the way of adoption is just as priceless if not even more so in some regards, because of how God used it to speak of what he did for us. We are grafted into an inheritance that does not consist of crumbs.  Christ’s death made sure we were not left with the crumbs!

So, anyway, here I am doing the God thing by adopting and obeying and I’m white living in the South (I was born California…. all the way) raising a black baby among ridiculous racial tension that should have been settled, dealt with and conquered years ago.  But that’s a whole other blog!  I’m not raising my son to think black or white. Society does that for me!  I am raising him to think God and Kingdom.  There is no color coating in the Kingdom of God.  Anything he deals with here on earth is simply because the devil (yes that’s right the guy with the horns), wants racism to hang around because he gets a big laugh out of watching people fight over colors!  THANK GOD in Revelation there are multi-colors flashing around God the Father’s throne.

I have read so many christian and secular articles about adoption and most all speak of the missing piece and the ‘vacancy’ left in a child who is adopted.  I wonder if this is because for years we have treated adoption not as wholeness of something but a separation of something else?  It has me on a quest with the Lord for answers!  A friend of mine who took a Psychology course in a Birmingham, Al University told me that in one of her classes the teacher spoke about racism becoming obsolete in years to come  because of the rate of adoption!  HALLELUJAH!  Yet in some countries the adoption rate of ethnic children to white families decreases because it’s just not “fashionable.”  I know I’ll be taken out of context here but let me clear it up by saying LOVE COVERS EVERYTHING.  If a child sees love before they see color, then color becomes secondary and love prevails.

During the recent Christmas break I was in Seattle with family.  My six-year old nephew started telling me that his older brother tells him he was adopted all the time, to the point of tears.  Well, that was all I needed to hear!  I took his older brother and dragged him down a hall by the ear, threw him up against the wall….. okay, okay not really, but I did calmly sit down with him and talk some adoption shop!  How many times have some of us been told as a way of sibling torment, that we were adopted and not part of our family?  I see where stuff falls in the cracks and becomes so part of the cracks that no one sees the cracks anymore! Why is the word adoption, which is a word that is precious, surrounded by hope, life and love, become the thing modeled to tell a young boy he is not really part of the family?  It was a great opportunity to make my nephews understand how Justice would feel hearing this coming from them.  Those words forming the very vacancies that are written about in books.  Vacancies and separations created by our mis-interpertation of a Christ-like act.

It was only after I adopted I realized that others didn’t feel like I did.  Most people are warmed at the sight of a stroller or pram being pushed in a mall.  I was greeted with shocked stares and fumbling words with people trying to figure out what we were and how to congradulate me.  I remember one lady asked me if I had any “real” children. I  had a friend who birthed her baby 8 months after Justice was born.  We traveled together in ministry and there were countless restaurant tables we sat at with our children where well meaning people would come to the table to tell my friend how adorable her little girl was and then make an uncomfortable glance in my direction with an almost pitiful face.  One woman on a plane once asked me if my husband was really dark.  Hmmm, Well, he’s Jewish and a carpenter, so maybe so! (Yes, that was really my response)

When death orphaned me in the natural I grabbed a hold of God as father.  All my missing pieces were found.  Trust in Christ shattered the vacant hole of my identity and God filled it by calling me his heir. It didn’t make life easy, but it did make the journey much more worth it.  I so want the church to grab a lifeline to the truth.  There are so many things I have had to face in 6 years of my life with raising Justice.  I figured out early on why the Lord had me name him that.  Maybe it’s why I feel the need to sound the alarm and have others be careful what they say and take a look at the value of adoption and not just treat it as the safety net for not being able to conceive.  I know not everyone falls into the stupidity category.  But when I read an article about some actress who was spotted with her daughter and her other “adopted child”  I wonder why?  Why?  Why do we isolate the one from the other?  Why not just say she was spotted with her children? I have lost count as to how many times children look at me and ask why I am white with a black child. I try hard to refrain from sarcasm as it is certainly not the child’s fault.  It is the adult parent’s fault for not showing their child that love  knows no color.

Being a single mother is hard.  It’s hard because of finances and babysitters, travel and doing everything myself, but the decision to adopt has catapulted me into a place of knowledge to the power of God’s love like nothing I have ever known.  I look at my little dark beauty and feel as if he grew in my belly the whole time! Maybe because Justice being born of my heart out of obedience prepared the NATURAL way to actually take hold of me.  Love bypassed opinion and human frailty and made a way for God’s reality to reside.  People of God, please lay down your opinions and throw hope instead of hindering what could change our society’s issues.  If you don’t feel called  to adopt a baby sponsor a World Vision child and start the process of renewal.   If you see us with our different colored babies in the mall or in church don’t be afraid to ask us how we adopted.  We will light up to tell you our stories

Ps.  I’m not mad, a smidge irritated yes but, I just think adoption is the greatest form of mercy ever!  Come join me!

Rita

2010 is in its final chapter.  The end is in sight and I calculate on this late December date all of my earnings, learning’s, and losses in this year.  I am sentimental and although that may look or be somewhat foolish, I don’t really care.  This was a pivotal year in more ways then I can almost process. 2010 was an amazing year!  It’s the year I came to an understanding of Grace that I had never thought to run into until I needed it to withstand and understand what I could not imagine facing.  Now, in retrospect, I wonder how I ever lived without how I encounter it now.  A lot can happen in a year.  More has happened this year then any other year I can remember.  Justice started kindergarten and migrated into a whole new schedule of early morning drop offs and catalogue uniform returns trying to understand exactly how “slim” was a “slim pant”.  Remembering to pack a lunch every morning AND get it into his backpack while packing a suitcase for myself to catch a flight out of town, became the routine.  Finding my “single mom balance” in the midst of it, a constant.

DIVE WORSHIP SCHOOL

The DIVE schools became more and more of an explosive part of the year!  Seeing the response of the women that came to be trained, encouraged and released in the creative arts is breathtaking. They became witness’s this year to the expansion of what DIVE is becoming and rallied around me with faith and testimony to see prayer answered in a miraculous way! PSALM 84 all the way!  Hope will always find the door of adversity and knock.  I was home when it did and answered.  Hope is the diffuser in the house now.  The scent is contagious and life is lived out loud instead of in shadows.  If anyone out there (who is a woman) is looking for a new freedom and release, in the area of creative expression and gift….please visit DIVEWORSHIP.COM for our upcoming 2011 schools.  We hope to secure our new facility in 2011 and see God do more through these amazing courses!

All THINGS WORSHIP

I set out to start things 3 years ago musically I had never done in recording and writing.  It was this year I watched them become a reality.  The fight and exhaustion it took to get here was brutal, but yeah, it paid off. I signed with a major distribution company (E1) to re-release all the former records I now owned the masters too, as well as signing a new recording/publishing contract with Integrity Music.  I finished the so-called “singles” I had started while raising community support two years ago to fund them.  I wanted the church to take part in how the worship was produced.  It worked!  What a journey and super natural season of making music and forming worship.  This project will now become the first release from Integrity entitled, “The Play List” coming in the spring of 2011.  I also was able to get mastered and mixed the LIVE recording I had done in 09 in Dallas at Gateway Church.  Getting these things accomplished in the midst of all the enemy could throw to hinder the outcome was an incredible task, but one I would do over just by the results!  Wow, I mean wow, what an amazing time!  I released the Gateway recording this month called “In This Forever”.   You can buy it in the merch section here on the site.

PAPERCLIP

Then of course……there’s the Paperclip Project!  Paperclip is going to be the first recorded release out of the DIVE Schools!  I chose the first eight gals from the first three years of schools to join me and start rehearsing their original works to record what is coming out of DIVE musically!  Be on the look-out!  2011 will release their sounds and you are not gonna wanna miss hearing what I get to see and hear coming out of these amazing WOMEN writers!

WEARING JUSTICE

If that wasn’t enough to get done I found the time to start preparing to launch a line of women and children’s T-shirts called “ Wearing Justice”.    The WJ line is another idea I had to help families who cannot really afford very costly adoptions.  I became aware of how many families would love to adopt children but simply cannot afford the fees to do so.  It’s a small way for me to help but to do that with something I love.  Kids clothes!  Yes, Justice will be our model to show them off when they are ready.  I mean why wouldn’t he?   Keep looking for the release of on this site as well.

FINDING EVE

With my plate piled high I added yet another addition.  I felt it time to start another women’s event out of a book I started called Finding Eve.  I started this one out of the word “restoration” and many conversations with God to keep going after the value in the daughters of Eve.  I feel a big responsibility to continue laboring for the broken lives and callings in women everywhere. Restoration in living, hoping, and dreaming, is kind of my new passion.  I think I understand it more then I ever have, this year especially.  My goal in 2011 is to finish the book and continue expanding the conference however God leads.

FINDING ME

More then anything though I found me more at 43 then I have ever felt.  It was kind of like God came in my front door and shut off every distraction and asked everyone in the room to leave. He cleared every table turned on every light.   Left alone with God, he talks.  He talks a lot.  I listened, and then obeyed.  There is a dynamic attachment to obeying the Lord.  Sparks fly and things catch on fire in the deep spirit, but the promise is, you won’t ever be the same.  Life is like a box of Lego’s.  I actually hate Lego’s.  I think they were invented to frustrate the single mom.  But there is this thing that comes over me in the meticulous snapping together of all these little pieces. When I follow the instructions one by one, I get to see the end results.  The challenge comes with the sight of accomplishment.  (Of course it takes one small knock of a 6 year old hand to reduce your 2-hour work to rubble, but at least the process worked)

So, how to end this long-blog final?  Goodbye 2010!  Thank you for an amazing year of stretching, wounding, glory, healing, moving, dreaming, risking, loving, hoping, finding, seeing and grabbing the friendship and worship of God in a greater way.

Hello 2011…bring it on!  Love, Rita

September 2010

Okay, so August was a bit of a whirlwind for me.  It had some really busy days and weekends, family visits and of course the big OFF TO KINDERGARTEN for Justice.  That was a day I will never forget!   September is here, settling in.  The air outside is a bit cooler and I am looking forward to Fall.  I am very thankful for this year.  I have felt the voice and affirmation of the Lord leading me into a really amazing season of life and finally, seeing some of the new things ahead has been a faith builder and a heart lifter.  I am still spinning a few dozen plates in the air but all of them have great purpose and I thought I would share with you some of what is on them.   Okay, here-goes.

Justice goes to School.

August Family Camping

Family Time (I'm a great Aunt)

Camping trip Aug 2010

#1DIVE – The Deep Innovative Vertical Expression Worship School continues to be so exciting!  The 2010 schools held so much expectation and talent!  I am excited to end this year with the remaining school, October 18-25th here in Charlotte, NC. I am planning on 6 schools next year!  I had looked into taking the school into Huntsville, AL but God directed me a different way and we might actually have a facility here in Charlotte very soon.  Fingers crossed!  This is exciting news and although details need to work themselves out, I have been undone by the favor of the Lord on this venture and so blessed to see where God is leading.  The women who have joined us for the schools continue to be challenged and changed by the Lord as he minister’s to and through them during their week in DIVE.  I am always so overwhelmed by the raw talent  that shows up for a DIVE school. These women songwriters and players, poets and artist have really only needed belief behind them to help push them to the next level.   It’s truly inspiring for me to be around THEM.  The Lord has also brought along some really amazing women leadership that have come to help serve and teach Dive with me.  This has returned the sight and beauty of what true unity and friendship looks like.  I am excited to venture into 2011 with these schools and continue encouraging and equipping women in the creative arts!

It’s out of DIVE that God really began speaking about the timing of recording and documenting the sound that comes as a result of the schools.  During the final days of a Dive Week the students are asked to present a song (or any other format of creative expression) to be critiqued and encouraged.  Most of the students are writers and singers.  I had it in my heart to start recording some of these songs and document the heart of DIVE in the sound of worship.   So, I started something new out of DIVE called: Paperclip Worship!

#2 PAPERCLIP – The idea of Paperclip was to take the women students that have come to DIVE  in the past 2 or more years and record an album of their songs that came in or around their DIVE schools.  I thought it would be a great way to document what is coming from the schools as well as show others what God is doing with women in the role of Worship and Musician and to help fund scholarships for so many worship leaders and creative gals that would love to come to DIVE but cannot afford too.  Also, I  wanted to give the girls involved with Paperclip an opportunity and experience to have their songs recorded professionally and listened too by more then just their own communities.   I don’t know where it will go or how successful it will be but I know that God gave and loves the idea and so far, I am amazed and undone by his favor in it.  Again, My life is all about taking the RISKS this year.

I will write and record a couple new songs on the projects every-time as well, so it keeps me on my toes keeping up with the likes of their skills!  We will do a live in-studio recording with these songs on October 11-12 2010 in Charlotte, NC.  This recording will be available by early 2011 on Itunes and my websites.  Put these dates down and pray for us.  We know God is with us, we want his presence throughout the recording.

I am so EXCITED for everyone to hear what I believe is a handful of beautiful songs coming in a fresh way with a fresh sound from some incredible writers….who are WOMEN!  My hope is to make this the first of many Paperclip Worship releases.  I am funding the project myself with the help of community.  If anyone out there loves the idea  of community sound enough to help financially and would love a tax-deductible donation,  you can email me at directly @ Diveworship@aol.com!

Paperclip Worship Rehearsals with the Producer

Paperclip Worship Rehearsals

#3DISTRIBUTION DEAL – Okay!  So I signed with E-1 Music for a distribution deal for the back catalogue of all my older CD’S as well as the first-time release of Beautiful You in stores.  So, all those looking for my older recordings, they are finally available!  My niece informed me I am even selling in Wal-Mart!  Woot! Woot!  I am excited about that.   It was a long time coming to get my recordings back up and out to the public but alas…….dreams come true!

#4MY NEW CD RELEASES – 2years ago I started with an idea while being outside of a record label.  The idea was to record my new songs in a way that had a new sound to it.  So, I decided to do it without a label.  The problem was there was no money.  Of course, I chatted with God about it and he told me to make the new sound by way of community.  I love having the gift to believe in others and make a way for them but would I really be able to find those that thought the same of me?  That was harder to swallow.

I was really having fun writing songs that I felt were about a new season for me.  I was also writing them in ways I’d never written a song before.  Some were even co-writes with a friend I loved dearly and was blessed to be connected with.  So, I bit the bullet and I spoke with friends, family and churches I had great relationship with and ask if they wanted to sow a seed financially into the new sound I was making.  I also went to producers (the likes of Jason Halbert, David Ruiz, Anthony Skinner, Daniel Bashta, Jason Morant, and Joel Khouri) and musicians who I had relationship with and asked them if they might cut their fees in order to sow into community!  It worked!  It has taken longer to do it that way but it worked!  So, What I have now is kind of really amazing PLAYLIST of new songs done by different producers and paid for with my funds and funds from those that believe in me.  True Community!  The journey has been so cool.   There were days I wondered if it would ever come into the light.  Now, I’m watching as it does.

Jason Halbert working on Singles

In the studio with Daniel Bashta

My Drummer

Anyways, to all of those who have pre-ordered the CD’s, they will be here soon.  I’m now looking at a November release but am shooting for late October.  I think it will be worth the wait.  I know for me, it has been.  The title right now for this project is called IN THIS FOREVER, but it might change to THE PLAYLIST!

#5 THE LIVE FROM GATEWAY CHURCH CD – Last September Gateway church in Dallas allowed me to come down and generously gave me an opportunity to have a night of worship with a live recording.  I have had that hard drive ready to be mixed and mastered now for a while.  With all the other things going on I have had to raise the funds to get this done as well.  FINALLY, that too is in the works.  So, my plan is to get these CD’s out together.  The Live CD has a mix of old favorites and new ones on it.  So, be on the lookout for that as well.

#6 FINDING EVE - The last fun bit is that I have started another Women’s Conference!  I used to run a conference called Fragrant Oil for years.  When FO ended, I sensed the Lord wanting me to continue praying and seeking him in the burden to see women set free through pure revelation of his love for them.    This new event is not a repeat but rather a continuation of that initial vision.  These conferences will pop up across the country and I will be traveling with many different speakers and worship leaders.  The vision is for a two-day event to find ‘Eve’ and tell her not to listen to the lie of the enemy.  You can read more about it and find a conference near you at Findingeve.org.  For the first two events I’m going to partner with Christy Wimber in New London, CT in October and Jacksonville, FL in November.

So, There is a lot on my plate but I am loving how the Lord is bringing me through the year in amazing ways and with great expectation.  I know this was a long, long blog, but there is so much more…..I have to figure out how to write it all down!  My encouragement to you all out there going through rough patches is to keep trying and keep hoping.  I spent many weeks wondering if anything would ever pan out.  It is. Hold on.  God is good!

Blessings,

Rita

Hang on for the road ahead......

You know that fog you try and pull yourself out of when you take an afternoon nap?  You lay down for a few minutes and “BAM” you are out like a light and then you feel as if you have to kick your way through a door to become conscious again?  I hate that feeling.  Maybe it’s why I don’t take many afternoon naps anymore.  That drug-like state always makes me feel like I have to reconnect with the outside world against my will and although it only takes a few minutes to do it, I still just simply hate the feeling.

Recently I was in a conversation with a friend who was having a tough time getting through a situation.  She expressed that she knew God was requiring her to just lay her wound down and walk away, but it was easier to say it then do it.  I think we all can relate right? I don’t think anything that pushes us to become better at communication, freedom or awareness will ever be easy to obtain.  Period.  It’s so much easier to talk someone else off a ledge then ourselves!

I’ve been living in a VIOLENT season.  Matthew 11:12 states that “The Kingdom of Heaven has suffered violence and the forceful people lay hold of it.”  I think many of us are in a season of laying hold of things in our lives with a forceful and fervent nature.  Which means that it is not a season of wasting time on unnecessary engagements or thoughts or conversations.  It’s pulling us out of the slumber because quite frankly, nap-time is over!

I was in my office a couple months ago and the Lord spoke to me and told me to call my dermatologist about the spots on my face. So I did.  I booked an appointment only find out that I have several advance stages of pre-cancer areas from all the sun bathing with baby oil growing up on the California coastline!  One spot in particular was a concern for the doctor. They took a biopsy, and I went home and waited for results.  Results came in and confirmed what the doctor had suspected. The office nurse called to book a follow up appointment.   I missed the appointment and the next 3 I made after that!  Life is busy.  I’m a single mom.  I travel everywhere! I don’t have a million hours in the day to think about me. The doctor then called several times leaving messages.  Then when I never responded I received a letter in the mail kindly telling me that it would be in my best interest to get the spot dealt with!  Geez, you would think that with my health involved I would get in and get taken care of!

God used this scenario to talk to me about how much we, as a people of God, treat him like this.  How many times does he come around telling us to deal with the issues at hand that may not be life threatening today but left un-dealt with, could be tomorrow?  I don’t want this in my life physically, emotionally or spiritually anymore.  I have had to learn through some really tough areas how to lay down what I could not do anything about.  It took years to do that.  Why?  For me the struggle came because I didn’t want to give others the wrong impression.  Others?  Others?  Really?  So, all this time I have not followed through with some really tough choices because I was too afraid that in making those choices I would offend others? But what about doing what God told me too?  What a hang up huh?  I may not be fully there yet, but I am sooooo on my way!  I am becoming violent in my righteousness and in the way I am claiming my life again.

I have had to suffer some pretty intense stuff this past year.  A precious friend recently quoted Proverbs 27:6 to me,  “Better are the wounds of a friend, than the deceitful kisses of an enemy.” We all have friends and we all have enemies.  They can both cause distractions. I have reached a place where I don’t have much time for distractions anymore.  God is a wound healer and a deliverer of all my enemies. If needed, we have to be a people who let our freedom speak for it self.  Let our peace stand-alone.  Let justice flow like a river and float down it.  Make sense?

I am FINDING FAITH in following through.  Walking it out.  Being willing to believe and be okay with God in control.  It’s July 2010.  The year is half over.  I desire to get to December and see, feel and hear, the Lord having gone ahead of me. To hear the rustling in the trees above where the Victor I follow, is finding out where my enemy is camping and shouting out the instructions on how to go into battle against him, is key. I love the verses in scripture that detail the battle already having been won before it’s fought.  Gezzz Louise!  Why are we such a fearful, uptight people?  Sigh.  Well, if your reading this maybe you should get violent about taking your life out of the suffering and into the song?   Maybe you need to deal with what God is asking of you before something worse happens?  Maybe you need to like me, make the ‘stinking’ appointment with the dermatologist and get on with it!  Be encouraged.  Be strong.  Start taking it by FORCE!

Rita

A week has almost passed since the June 2010 D.I.V.E. School of Worship.  The 3rd one this year and it was amazing.  I am so undone by how the Lord moves upon these worship schools.  The way the ladies that come reach for Him and find such hope and inspiration in making their sounds of worship before him, always just blesses me beyond words.  If you are a women and you are out there needing rich encouragement and hope for the call of worship on your life, you should apply to a DIVE School.

Nothing else I have ever done has ever felt so rewarding.  There is a coming sound and I stand in belief that God is about to do something so powerful within the arts upon the earth!  We had 4 nations represented in the June school.  It was a powerful time of seeing lives and hearts knit together in unity and watch as they all threw courage on each other.  The heart behind DIVE is to not just train the gift but to breathe life upon the heart behind the gift.  To blow hope and life within the worshiper/artist and watch as they take flight.  I truly believe the Kingdom is about pulling each other along with encouraging shouts of hope and life.  If we all rely on our gifts to get us noticed we start to clang around a bit.  The Word says that God looks at the heart of a man.  This past week was such a an explosion of talent and tenacity!  I am so proud of the sweet 16 that came and found a sound to make in greater ways then they had before.

Vicky Beeching came (Vickybeeching.com)  and poured herself out in song and life.  She was such an amazing addition to what DIVE is all about.  We will have Jennie Riddle as our guest speaker in the August 20-27th school here again in Charlotte, NC.  If you are a woman and feel called to the arts in any way and need hope, encouragement and training, apply for our August school at Diveworship.com.

I have attached a video of the song the June group wrote for me as well as a couple pictures. Thank Vic for your heart!  What a week!  Now, if the heat wave in Charlotte would stop!

Blessings,

Rita

It’s June!  Where did the spring go?  I don’t remember a year going so fast like this one feels it’s going.  I feel a bit grateful for it though.  It’s been busy and hectic at moments, but so refreshing.  I love spring but I am looking forward to the summer months.  Justice starts ‘big school’ in August and I’m freaking out about that a little.  Time flew with those years too.  I’m going to have to pack lunches now for the next 15 years!  I wonder how many turkey sandwiches that looks like?

I’m sitting in Mystic, CT today thinking about this remaining year and what the Lord will do with it.  I am grateful for how the Lord has cleared the counters of my life of so many things that didn’t need to be there any longer.  I tend to take on responsibilities I just was never supposed to.  The gracious hand of God, trying to teach me to let go of what is not mine to worry about has been really freeing.  I love the statement in scripture, “It is for freedoms sake that Christ has set us free.” (Gal 5) I’ve been pondering the part of “for freedoms sake”.  How often do we muck up the atmosphere of our lives by hanging on to responsibilities we feel tied to or guilty keeping?   It’s really quite a revelation to let go of something you don’t know is binding you until you finally let it go and freedom rushes over your senses!  I have had to take a long hard look at my “to do” list and my “keep this going” list and start really crossing off the things that I don’t need “to do” anymore and I don’t need to “Keep this going” any longer.  It’s been as simple as telling myself, the dishes left in the sink will be okay left there to clean in the morning…..to…..laying down friendships that are one sided and not worth all the emotion put into them. It’s fighting sleep thinking: about the piles of office work on my desk….and….spending all day holding a sick child and getting none of it done!

Life is a boatload of responsibilities and the way I am learning how to walk out shouldering them is to not let the effect of them weigh me down.  Instead, I am learning to carry only the responsibilities that I can find positive outcomes in.  The past 6 months have been such a heart opening experience!  Watching the faithfulness of God come without even answering the natural prayer.  How is that?  Well, it can happen.  It does not mean that you don’t still feel overwhelmed and under-appreciated at times.   It simply means you cast your cares on the Lord and he sustains the righteous.  Sustains……sustains. Keeps me going .  Keeps me feeling supported, held, able to bear it. (dictionary meanings)  For Freedoms Sake.  For the sake of the way I feel with the weight off me even while still having to walk out all the responsibilities is liberating.  Literally, liberating.

So, these are my thoughts today.  The thoughts on a June day in Mystic.  I’m looking forward to the Freedom Sake that the remaining parts of 2010 has to offer.  Bring it on.

RS