Call it being a problem-solver. A critical thinker. A realist.

These are good qualities. Aren’t they? I hope so. Because we’re a family chock-full of them! *wink*

All four of us tend in this direction. We’re always looking for ways to improve a thing. Often evaluating. Critiquing ideas. Thinking and talking about the world around us. I enjoy these things about us. It helps us to live well – with vision and leadership for our numbered days.

But, it has its dark side. Sometimes the weight of it can be crushing. And, all too often, it can lead to an ungrateful heart. . .

A disposition that always notices the things undone instead of being happy about the ones that are finished. Always viewing my to-do list with dread because I can never get it all done and the things crossed off never seem to catch up with the boxes yet unchecked. There is little joy in the process or in the very work itself.

A tendency to miss the current moment because I’m focused on the thing I forgot to bring or the fact that we’re running late. Scurrying from thing to thing, a little out of breath and distracted.

A bent toward improving behavior instead of delighting in a heart that is wrestling. Pushing for more instead of just rejoicing in the small victories.

These are the dark sides of being a critical thinker. I don’t think that means we should stop “excelling still more.” I don’t think we should pretend that life doesn’t disappoint or that some behaviors are OK when they’re not or that the things on my to-do list don’t matter when they do.

But, I do think I can adjust my focus. I can train my eyes to look for the good stuff. I can guide my vision to find the precious in the midst of the mundane. I can reorient my disposition toward gratitude – always.   

A heart that declares: this is enough. This moment. This day. These people. It’s enough. My friend Ann at A Holy Experience calls it being a Joy Finder.

And, BTW, what I’m really saying is that God is enough. He’s the Giver of these moments, these blessings, these people. His gifts are more than adequate. Will I believe that? Will I embrace it moment by moment, day by day? I want to. Will you join me?

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Praying for continued heart change and training my vision on the good stuff:

• Fall temps and the wind blowing through the trees again
• Scones and hot tea on the patio on Saturday morning
• My chocolate brown fleece pullover – cozy during Caleb’s football game
• New legos and the boy room all strewn with creations
• Sounds of cousin laughter
• Dark chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds from T Joes and sampling them in the car on our way home
• Friday breakfast dates with the man who still makes my stomach flip-flop
• Laughing until we can barely breathe
• Clearing the desk piles… for now anyway
• The bread & the wine and Sunday’s sacred reminder

As I crack the door, I hear the sounds of laughter. They’re congregating around Faye’s big wooden kitchen table.

The chatting is easy now and the cares of the day roll away as we settle in. Coffee flows freely and we drink deeply of community.

We reminisce about the amusing moments of the day: the guy with the funny name who called the office earlier that day and her trying not to giggle as she took the message; the silly antics of kiddos who ask crazy things of us mamas; the angry man who cussed at her because she had pulled her foreign car too close to his American one. Recounting the day puts it into perspective and, oh, how we laugh.

Pretty soon one of us glances at the clock and our playful banter turns to the more serious stuff of life. We’ve been reading a portion of Titus 2 together – “encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be dishonored.” We’re asking ourselves what it means to live this out. How do we pursue these seven qualities? And how can we encourage each other in that pursuit? Could we really dishonor the very words of God if we don’t?

This is where you will find us on the first Wednesday night of every month. Around this table. Coffee cups in hand. Journals open and ready. Kids all tucked in at home under Dad’s care. Each month we explore another quality on the Titus list and we ask each other the hard questions. The questions that are all too easily ignored in the fast pace of life. Questions like: How are you doing at loving your husband? What does it mean to be a worker at home? Are you doing what it takes to maintain a pure heart?

We’ve been at it for about eight months now. Call it an accountability group, call it a gathering, call it whatever you want. We just know that we need each other. We know the women that we want to be and we know that gaps that keep us from being those women. We know that we want to make it “home” before dark. Home to Jesus before we’re vulnerable, stumbling around in darkness. And we’re just humble enough to know that the stumbling happens all too easily. We’ve all seen the carnage along the path – women who decided they just couldn’t love their husbands anymore or got distracted from the simple stuff of tending their home or stopped being vigilant over their own hearts. We know what is at stake.

And so we meet together, talking or emailing in-between our monthly gatherings. We celebrate birthdays together, bring cookies or flowers to each other when needed, pray for the hard stuff, rejoice in the good stuff, email encouraging words, and check-up on each other. Each month looks a little different depending on the need. In many ways, we’re still figuring out how to make the most of our time together. I’m not sure there’s a formula. I just know that I’m coming to really love these women and that I am grateful to have them in my life.

We’re five very different women. There is variety in our loves and hobbies. Some of us work outside the home, some of us have part-time jobs we can do from home, one of us is a full-time homemaker. We have kids that span the toddler through teenage years. Three of us have kids in Christian schools, the other two have kids at public schools. We serve in our church and community according to our different giftings.

Our common bond is simply Jesus. We are grace-dwellers, seeking with our whole lives to worship the One who rescued us.

And, we are finding that the seeking is all the richer as we do it together.

Summer has begun in earnest at the McKee home.

Plenty of time…

 For fun in the sun…

For sweet treats…

For intimate moments…

and for cultivating the deep places…

Summer is a time to be savored.

Not just because we have more time by the pool… but for many of us with kids in school, it is a rare time to have the kids at home all day, everyday. I want to really savor the moments with them and make investments into their growing character. I want to enjoy the simplicity and the freedom that summer brings. I want to get us outside for picnics and hikes and farmer’s markets and flower finding.

Please join me over the next few days as I consider and plan to savor summer. I’ll give you peek into some of our favorite, long-standing summer activities and some new things that we’re going to try as well.

And what about you… what are you anitcipating most as you step into summer?

Sweet cyber friends – I’m sorry! I’ve been a bad blogger. Very bad blogger. I’ve been “MIA” for 3 weeks now. Ugh.

I love the writing and it makes me melancholy when I don’t do it. Please forgive me and lets start the journey again. There’s lots happening in our McKee world and in my heart. Thanks for joining me along the way…

I’m intrigued by his quiet service. “Who is that guy anyway?”

He’s behind the project house stomping on pop cans for the recycling bin. No one knows he’s back there doing this thankless job. It’s only 1990 and recycling hasn’t even become very vogue yet. He’s alone in the alley and I watch him from my window. He in his Nike Vulturo hiking boots, cargo shorts and Denison tee. “Denison? Where’s Denison?”  I linger there a few minutes more and then on with my evening chores.

It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college.  I was far from home, living in a huge house with 90 other students from around the country – my friend Cheryle was the only other person I even knew. We were on an adventure with Campus Crusade for Christ. Little did I know all the ways that summer would shape my life…

Not the least of which was that Denison guy that I’d spied in the alley.

I hadn’t been looking for love. In fact, I’d started the summer dating someone else from my own college. He was a great guy but conversations with roommates, some soul-searching, and a “Dear John” letter led to the close of that relationship.

It wasn’t more than a few days after I’d sent said letter that I had been paired up with the Denison guy to go do spiritual interest surveys on the boardwalk in Atlantic City.

By this time I knew his name was Rick. We’d met in the lobby a few weeks earlier when his first words to me were “cop a squat” as he pulled up a bench for Cheryle and me. I in my navy blue, Delta Gamma pull-over, hoping that my Greek letters would hide all the apprehension and insecurity I’d been feeling at meeting 90 new people. “Cop a squat? What the heck does that mean? Sort of a weird thing to say.”

That survey pairing was just random; but, looking back, we’re pretty sure God had His fingerprints all over that one. For we talked in between surveys and something began to stir within both of us. Interest was piqued. Interest became pursuit. That pursuit was received and blossomed into romance. In time the romance became something deeper and love was born between us.

But it was more than a summer of young love. It was a summer of deep spiritual challenge as our director, Jim Sylvester, encouraged us to live in the shadow of God’s amazing grace. Not only for our own lives but he implored us to also take that grace to a parched and dying world.

Our fledgling relationship took root in that soil – right from the beginning we talked of living for something more than the proverbial picket fence. Of a life that revolved around Someone worthy of everything we had to give.

That was nearly 20 years ago.

Yesterday we celebrated 18 years of marriage. Eighteen years of covenant life together – no matter what has or will come. Eighteen years of letting Jesus chip away the junk in our lives bit by bit as we laugh and cry and agonize and rejoice through life together.

Coincidentally, we celebrated it with our Community Group serving a meal to homeless people in downtown Akron. No silver or candlelight or wine. Just plasticware with big pots of chicken soup, donated cornbread and jugs of red punch.

I’m not sure I’d have it any other way. In fact, as I looked across the cafeteria last night at my man talking with a young man who has spent the last seven of his 25 years in and out of prison, I was sure of it.

I think it’s exactly the best way we could have spent our anniversary.

Isn’t that what we said 20 years ago when two college students sat on the rock jetty, stared out into hugeness of God’s Atlantic Ocean and dreamed of living for something more than the picket fence?

Happy Anniversary, Denison guy…

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I’m adding to my gratitude list today. So thankful for 18 years with the man who still gives me butterflies… and for the life we have together.

Caleb’s best friend from 1^st grade was a boy from China. In 2^nd grade it was Song Jae from S. Korea. Not to mention other classmates like Shreya from India and Liza from Russia and Benil from Nepal and Ming Cho from China.

Then there’s Madison’s dear friends YuNing from Taiwan and Jun Sa from S. Korea and Alexa and Sergio, who are both from Mexico.

If I thought about it a little bit longer, I know I could think of other kids from other parts of the world. And, those are just the kids from other countries. They both also have friends who are Hispanic-Americans or who are Black or who were adopted from other countries but were raised in American families.

This racially-diverse environment is our public elementary school!!

And we love it. What a wonderful place for my kids to gain an appreciation for God’s creative design of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation in this beautiful world.

Last night we had an event at the school to celebrate that diversity – our international families bring a favorite dish from their country and the rest of us dig out a family tradition or an American favorite and we all come together for a meal.

As I stood in line with a man from Senegal and his Japanese wife and their two beautiful daughters, I was struck once again with what an amazing place this world is. How good of God to make people in such rich diversity – even among people of the same race, there is an incredible range and variety. A farmer has a totally different life experience than a man on Wall Street than an artist in Appalachia. And, yet, when we can appreciate those differences, we are all better-off for the variety.

As much I love the diversity in our school, I’m also mindful that the world can also be a very ugly place. I know that if I were to move to my one friend’s country, my family might be beaten and my husband slaughtered in the night because we have a Bible and believe in Jesus. Our own country’s history with slavery shows the uglier side of failing to give equal worth to all people.

I cling with tenacity to my Lord’s example. His love for all people. His sacrifice so that all might come to Him.

And, I enjoy this tiny glimpse into His amazing world. Right here in my own backyard – at a small school in Midwestern America.

I’m a tad behind in my photo albums. Five years to be exact. I hate telling you that. Especially if you’re one of those caught-up people like my friend Jen.

BUT, being behind has its blessings. It gives this mamma’s heart time to pause and look back. To revel in days gone by. To savor in today before it becomes a photo in an album five years from now.

I got some time away to scrapbook this weekend. And, an amazing thing happened. When I finally stopped berating myself for being so far behind, I was able to just enjoy all those memories. The photos of Maddie when her hair was still really blonde and her cheeks were chubby. The antics of my Caleb as a preschooler-becoming-Kindergartner. I was reminded that I have much for which to be thankful: 

• A husband who gets down on the floor and plays with his kids. He’s in so many of the photos with them; not distant behind a newspaper but on their level and right in the thick of it. Giving hugs when the training wheels came off, congratulating a hard-earned soccer goal, holding tired kiddos, praying with them, tickling them. Loving them.
• Two kids who are full of personality and life and orneriness – even the photos capture it.
• God’s design in creating them each so differently. They live in the same house, have the same upbringing and the same last name, but they are two distinct people with dreams and gifts and desires that shaped their activities even in those earlier years.
• Several years that my extended family lived close and we were able to live life together. Mamo & Pa didn’t always live in Mississippi. For the early years they lived right here in Northeast Ohio; we could stop by unexpectedly and they were able to be at all the cousin birthdays. The kids roamed their yard and loved on their dogs and played legos in their guest room. I’m remembering big bonfires and watermelon juice dripping down all the dirt-caked cousin cheeks after a day of helping Mamo mulch. Life changes and moves happen but I’m thankful that we had those years.
• A sister’s new life. As I work through my albums, I’m seeing her in more and more family photos as Jesus grabbed hold of her heart and she starting coming around more often. Now, she’s one of my dearest friends.
• Lots of work to our fixer-upper house. Old photos reveal the tired walls and the worn-out carpet and the effort of transforming it into the place we call home today.  
• McKee cousin memories and the way those big boys dote on our little Madison – the only girl on that side of the family.
• Always enough provision to make birthdays and holidays special times together. Our photos are full of simple traditions that have shaped our family.
• The four of us together. A lot.
• Pages of Christmas card photos from friends who live all over the country. Our years with Campus Crusade allowed us to cross paths with so many precious people.

The time away was refreshing and the pause was good for my soul. I’d like to be caught-up on my photo albums. But, sometimes being behind has its own advantages. It was a good thing to look back and celebrate. To thank God now for the things I might have taken for granted back then.

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Thanks for joining me and others for Monday gratitude!

Just because… someday he’ll go off to college and the army guys will be in a box in the crawl space.

And, then who will guard my window?

Time. It’s been on my mind a lot lately. How should I spend it? How can I make the most of it? Where am I wasting it? Do I spend it in a way that reflects my priorities?

Time is one of our most precious commodities. It’s unlike any other unit of measurement because once it’s spent there is no way to get it back. We can refill a glass of water or replenish the cupboards with fresh stocks from the grocery. We can even regroup and work to earn more money to fill empty bank accounts. All in all, we humans are pretty adept at finding alternative resources when current ones dry up.

But, time is wholly different. Once time is spent, it is gone. There’s just no way to get it back.

I’ve really been wrestling with that reality lately. I don’t like it. Especially because I’m pretty sure that I’m not always spending mine well. Something in me hates the tyranny of the clock. So much effort is spent on schedules and goals and to-do lists. I feel like I’m always scrambling to evaluate my time and often feeling defeated in the effort.

I can share more of that process in posts to come. The work of using time well – both in the being and the doing of life – is a constant challenge. Tips and strategies and evaluating tools abound. THAT is for another post.

But, as I’ve been grappling, I was reminded of a passage from one of my favorite books, A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. It helps give voice to the frustrating struggle we have with time.

When I read his insight, my heart cries “yes” and it just feels good to put words to the struggle. Perhaps it will encourage you as well…

“But all the fulfillments were somehow, it seemed to me, incomplete, temporary, hurried. We wished to know, to savour, to sink in – into the heart of the experience – to possess it wholly. But there was never enough time; something still eluded us…

“In the reality of Now the clock is always ticking. One might suppose, looking at the glossier advertisements of watches – ever more exact, ever more spectacular flashing of the passing second – that modern man considers time a lovesome thing or, possibly, has a watch fetish. We might be better advised to hurl the lot into already-polluted Lake Erie.

“And yet, after all, the clock is not always ticking. Sometimes it stops and then we are happiest. Sometimes – more precisely, some-not-times – we find ‘the still point of the turning world’. All our most lovely moments are perhaps timeless.”

He then goes on to write about our frustration with time as really a deeper longing that is rooted in eternity.

“I believe the longing for eternity is built-in to us all… If indeed, we all have a kind of appetite for eternity, we have allowed ourselves to be caught up in a society that frustrates our longing at every turn… In fact, we are harried by time…

“And yet, why not? Time is our natural environment. We live in time as we live in the air we breathe. And we love the air. How strange that we cannot love time…

“It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it – how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren’t adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home…

“What it will be is quite beyond anything we can imagine. And yet it will be home. Of that we may be sure. I am as certain of the timelessness to come as I am that time was the worst of the evils in Pandora’s box.”

There is still a call from my Lord to spend my time well. I need not squander it away and come to the end of my earthly days full of regret for the ways that I wasted it on unworthy things.

And, yet, it is good to put words to the struggle as I live within its constraints.

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 ps – if you’ve never read Vanauken’s book, it’s definitely worth your time. It’s a beautiful memoir about his relationship with his wife (Davy), their search for faith and the tragedy of Davy’s untimely death. During their journey to Christ, they meet C.S. Lewis and he plays a large role in their developing faith. As a disclaimer, I will warn you to have a box of Kleenex handy…

If you do read it, please let me know what you think!

It’s not really what you’d call the glamorous life.

Rick and I used to joke that we’d probably never be featured on the front page of our respective college alum magazines.  

I mean, for the first 15 years of our married life we worked for a college ministry. Most people didn’t even understand what that meant. Oftentimes they wondered why we were still taking classes and if we were ever going to graduate.

We used a backpack instead of briefcase. Wore flip flops instead of loafers.

My credentials were my Greek letters, not a license or a degree.

We weren’t in it for the money. In fact, we didn’t make a ton of money. Our favorite vehicle was an old-school SUV that a family gave to us after their daughter was finished with it. At least five or six times a year, we didn’t even receive a full paycheck.

And, to top it all off, it was a Christian ministry. Let’s be honest, in the U.S., Christianity isn’t as vogue as it used to be. Even professed Christians seem to think that we Christians need a “new kind” of something or other.

Like I said, it’s not exactly the kind of stuff that makes the front page of the alum magazine. (Come to think of it, both of our universities probably wish that Christian ministries would leave the college campus all together!)

But, we loved it. It was worth every high and low that we could give it.

It is  true that we don’t have tons of material stuff to show for it. I don’t have a big house or fancy clothes or dazzling jewelry or that sort of thing. But, I like to think that I have my own sort of “bling.”

It’s the women. Women around the country who were once college students and are now living out their calling in various vocations and roles. In God’s perfect timing and grace, we found each other during their four years of college and I got to play a part in helping them grow in their faith.

These five women in particular are some of the most precious things in my life. I’m proud of them. Thrilled that God used me to play a mentoring role in their lives. None of them came from Christian homes so I got to be a sort of spiritual mom to them.

Sometimes it was as simple as having them in my home for tea and quiet conversation off-campus. Or taking them to the movies after a heart wrenching day. Or teaching them how to study their Bibles. Or giggling with them about a boy that they liked. Or showing them some of my homemaking tips. Or encouraging them to take a step of faith and risk some discomfort among their peers.

I prayed for them, wept over them, laughed with them, had dinner with them, advised them, and just walked through life with them.

The irony of it all is actually sort of funny. I laugh because they were even sort of sad when Rick and I remodeled our kitchen. Our kitchen was the ugliest place in the house. I’m not kidding. Really ugly and gross. It took us eight years to save the time and money to fix it up. So for eight years, I made it work and learned to be thankful for beat-up kitchens. (Turns out, you can still make good food in an ugly kitchen!)

But, to these women that kitchen was beautiful. They remember standing there at the old butcher block while I sliced banana bread or boiled water for tea. They remember our conversations and our laughter. They insist that they don’t really even remember the peeling paint, the old appliances, the dirty cupboards and the limited space. Their memories are etched with the relationship and the moments, not the stuff that surrounded them.

Well, my role in their lives is different now. They’ve graduated and started lives of their own. Today, I’m more older sister than mom. And, they are my friends.

Four of the five are already married. All four times I cried with joy as those doors at the back of the sanctuary opened and these beautiful brides came down the aisle to become one flesh with their godly husbands. Their weddings each a glimpse of Jesus and His bride, the church.

Now, we’re about to watch sweet Molly do the same. I’ll be the old lady bridesmaid with the Kleenex hidden in her bouquet. I can’t believe that getting to know her and love on her was my job for a time.

I think as far as bling goes, that these gals are more dazzling than any diamond or piece of fine jewelry that I could ever have.

(Now… if only I could figure out how to fit them in my jewelry box…)