My Story

 

Rita Lindstedt
Living God’s Masterpiece

 

My name is Rita. I grew up in a small town in rural Wisconsin in what one would call a rather large, traditional Catholic family. I was the oldest of 6 kids and we were all spaced basically a year apart. It was crazy, but it was good.

 

With jr. high and then high school came significant teenage rebellion and a completely reckless lifestyle. Week after week my family planted themselves in the same pew as the generation before us did, yet it was a tradition that held little significance or meaning for me. The messages and songs all had the same monotone ring to them and none of it seemed relevant to me or to my life. God was incredibly distant. He wasn’t even a bleep on my radar screen.

 

After a series of events I found myself transferring colleges just days prior to the start of my sophomore year. I began dating a young man I knew from high school and he invited me to join his family for church. It was a small church in the country – something right off the front of a postcard. From the moment I walked through the doors I knew there was something different about this church. These people wanted to be there. The passion when they sang was something I had never encountered before. Although I did not realize it at the time, that day marked a new beginning in my journey of faith.

 

We married, had a few children, I finished college, we bought a house…and I found Jesus. It was a process for me. Forgiveness was easy to extend but much harder to embrace. It took time and exploration of the Scriptures before I came to a place of understanding and acceptance of the richness of Jesus' message.

 

As I look back over my life it still amazes me to think that God has always been with me, that He has always been pursuing me, and that he always had a plan for my life. Years after I met my husband, and as we began to build our marriage on our new found faith, he shared with me that while he was living a life a part from the God he was raised to believe in, he prayed desperately for God to bring someone into his life to help him find his way back to faith. I was that answer to those prayers. God used me when I had no desire to be used. He had, and continues to have a plan for my life. He continues to give me more than I could ever have hoped for. He has blessed with me with 3 incredible sons, 2 daughters-in-law whom I love dearly, and a community that embraces me for who I am.

 

Now I am at the Gallery following after God on a new adventure of sharing His amazing story of redemption, grace, forgiveness and love. I have come to learn no one loves us more than the One who created us.

 

I am God’s masterpiece--a work of art He has created for relationship with Himself and His world.

 

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