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When given the opportunity to speak with Rita Springer, I jumped quickly. I know, hero worship isn’t good, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find her intriguing.
I've long appreciated her passion and her open expression of love to the One she so obviously adores. That kind of zeal draws me like a moth to a flame, deep calling out to deep. Like everyone, I've read of her recent adoption of baby Justice, now approaching his first birthday, and as a parent myself, I was curious about the impact of his arrival. Anyone who has a child, and who is honest, will tell you your life is forever altered, usually dramatically. After listening to the sincerity of her recent album, "I Have to Believe," I was not surprised to find Rita willing to openly discuss the new changes in her life. "Yes," she laughingly confessed, "I'm immersed in raising this baby. It has been a big adjustment as I try to go from focusing on Justice to going back on the road. This is an interesting season in which I feel kind of caught between two things. I know I was commanded to do what I did, and it was a joy to do what I did, the desire of my heart, but when I adopted him I thought God would step in and take care of everything. Now he has me in this season of transition as I try to be the provider and raise this little boy, when really I just want to stay home and stare at him." Her honest confession is oh-so-familiar to me and every other woman in this country who labors to find the godly balance in parenting. It is the truest of sisterhoods, the struggle to succeed in this most noble of callings and Rita has long been a champion of the sisters. I am struck by the irony of her situation. Springer's "Fragrant Oil" Conferences have become a staple of women's ministry in recent years. With her calling to bring healing to hurting women, she is not unfamiliar with their burdens and sorrows. But she has always ministered as a single, childless woman, and while certainly no one can question the validity of her calling or her usefulness, it is true nonetheless that becoming a parent irreparably transforms a woman's heart and her single status may have shut her out of some of the experiences she encountered in those events. But the advent of Justice changed all that and she is now a card-carrying member with all rights and privileges. The sisterhood can use truth-tellers like Rita. "I'm so preoccupied with Justice now and this major transition as I try to figure out how to do this. When I adopted the baby I thought I'd see more of the Father heart of God than ever before; instead I've had to search for more of it. But it's part of my reaching for God and it has come out in my music. My song says, 'You have to declare'," she discloses, "but we don't want to declare. We want to sit around and mope and say, 'why didn't you show up, God, the way I thought you'd show up?'" Her voice softens as she reveals, "I told Him I wanted to go deeper and this is part of that but my heart has to learn to see it that way. I think sometimes I have no clue about what He's thinking but I can still say I have peace in my soul and I'm OK with that." "Now in these last couple of weeks with the baby, I've begun to think, oh, is this it? I speak to a lot of women who are hurting in different ways but suddenly I'm profoundly drawn to the single mother. I feel like the Lord has said to me, 'You speak to women all over the world but you've never really spoken to these single moms who walk through the doors of my church and are paid no attention by anyone.'" Her fervor is evident as she tells me, "I heard the statistic last week on TV that over 40% of single mothers in America live below the poverty level. I've been calling out to God to provide for me so that I don't have to go out on the road but the Lord is saying, 'Wait a second, this is an opportunity for you to realize that there are hundreds of thousands of women calling out for help and the church isn't hearing them, but you understand them now.' I'm still reaching for meaning and it doesn't resolve my situation but the Lord has given me a gift in this burden if I can intercede for a group that people are forgetting." It's hard to argue with her logic and her timing is impeccable as she ends our discussion with a final observation, "It shouldn't take a Katrina for the world to recognize that we need to be there for each other." Like I said, a champion, this Rita Springer. Read my review of "I Have to Believe."
The copyright of the article Rita Springer Interview in Christian Music is owned by Kevan Breitinger. Permission to republish Rita Springer Interview in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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