THE SOUL, A CAREGIVER’S VIGOR

IN THIS REEL OF THREE, NUMBER TWO IS DEDICATED TO YOUR SOUL.  YES.  THE AMAZING YOU!

Quickly…two updates from past blogs:

Taken 2/5/13

NUMBER ONE update comes to you from my last post, A Caregiver’s Vigor…day 40 is here!  Stats, Web’s energy level is high, his RA is under control (without pharmaceuticals) and he has lost nearly 24 pounds!  Real, organic raw food is his new medication.  We have added small amounts of protein along with freshly made juice for at least one meal a day, preferably two if time allows.  We are in this for life.  It really has been a Godsend for Web’s illness.  And I have benefited as well.  My weight has leveled out and I continue to feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, yes, this saying comes direct to you from my lovely mother.

NUMBER TWO update comes from, Beginning A New Journey blog posted September 2012.
Are we moving?

It appears not.  We have been offered a position here in the valley (announcement coming soon) and are happy to tell you, ourselves and mostly Zach that for the time being, we get to stay on our very favorite hilltop and in our beloved emerald valley!  Hip-hip-horray!

HAVE YOU EVER ASKED, FATHER, “Who am I and why am I here?”  What an enchanting and lovely dialogue it will spurn between you and He!

I enjoy the culinary arts…

lavender is my favorite flower…

I enjoy photography and
worshiping with my whole life…(Isreal, 1999).

My family, I love them all so much it hurts….

THESE ARE THINGS I enjoy and love, but they are not the whole of me.  I am not sure we ever know ourselves entirely (I think that is in the bible somewhere), but we can know in part when we ask the One who created us, and look on, if you will, as He peels away the layers of our complex being.  I know He is smiling big with delight every second of our “big reveal”.  

Having said that, a part of who we are, and why we are here is tangled up in our loves and enjoyments, gifts and talents.  Some of our whole belongs to the spaces that fill the gaps between verve; the tears, the yawns (I love a good yawn, don’t you?), the prayers, hand holding and smiles.  Our humanity, it is part of who we are for now, so make friends with it; yes, love it if you can.  

I SUPPOSE I HAVE WONDERED who I am and why I am here for a good part of my life.  Strange as it sounds, I wasn’t aware that I could ask God why He made me, or who He made me.  I thought that would be considered impertinent.  I have learned that as a child of, God no question is impertinent.  Ask what you will.  You will not find a more gracious Teacher, Friend, or Father.  It is a beautiful journey to begin.  

A SMALL SNIPPET OF MY STORY:  One remembrance continues to come to mind often, why I don’t know, but perhaps it is because Father hammered the memory steadfastly to my soul at age eleven, so that He might show me something profound at age fifty-five.

I was in grammar school, probably around the sixth grade.  I sat on the cold dark green seat of the long yellow fuselage shaped school bus and prepared for the fourth-five minute daily drive to the town where I went to school.  I stared out the small rectangular shaped window allocated to my setting, as we careened down hill, over dale and zipped along treelined country roads.  As my body dipped, popped and leaned with the movement of the large machine, I dreamed, I thought and I prayed as was my custom.  

I prayed especially hard that day, as I stared out of the window with tears burning my eleven-year-old eyes, I asked God to change me.  I wanted to wake up bubbly, funny and smart, like Susan (not her real name).  Susan had long shiny hair, sparkly eyes and her personality drew people to her like wild flowers reaching for the sun.  I just wanted to be someone others would like to hang with and appreciate, well, in a nut shell, I wanted to be popular; I was anything but.  My roots were country (that is a good thing, but in a town school…not so much) and I was the third of six children, poor as can be and insanely insecure.  I didn’t like me when compared to the popular girls.  I’d stare longingly at them, carefully, so that I might emulate, and I’d feel my lack, like a non-personality, overlooked and sometimes unappreciated.  I would never be one of them.

HE DIDN’T answer the way I thought He would, with instant change and all that.  I thank Him for that.  
I’m sure Father smiled as He listened, He always listens, but…well…He had formed me; inside and out, larger than normal nose and all, given me all sorts of unique seeds of potential because…as He stared lovingly at His child, at what He had designed, He said, “I did good” (paraphrase mine).  He longed to watch me unfurl into all I could be and I wasn’t to be like Susan at all, but rather, fully Karen.  He created little ol’ me, he loved, Karen Ekstrom-Staunton, born in July of 1957, shy and demure, dreamer and meditator and thinker on things too deep for me to understand, the mysterious and the everyday.  Yes, the one who thought herself boring and invisible was/is loved and hovered over by, Father. 

No person in all of eternity would, or could be the Karen Ekstrom-Staunton, plus Jesus mix He wished to bring to earth….so He hovers, watching….to draw only those in this time that We together would draw….He hovers….no one would love my husband, my children as I could; He hovers, he watches intently as though there were a web cam following me everywhere I go, not to spy, but to love, to breath the best out of Himself towards His child.  
I now love, Karen Ekstrom-Staunton and I don’t pray to be changed.  I pray for transformation, yes.  But that is quite a different prayer than to pray my very being be changed into someone else (but that was the heart of a hurting child and I know He knew and used it, otherwise, why would I remember such a small blip of my life?).  

As I yield, He has been and continues to transform the, selfish me (I can be quite self absorbed).  This is simply proper Kingdom etiquette and though some of us may bristle at the words, proper and etiquette, I have learned that there are Kingdom standards that require transformation (a very multifaceted word).  I find it to be a mysteriously full of life and that it brings out the real powerful me.  Our original selves, untransformed, they would function sloppily in the Kingdom where justice rules and if I do say so, even in this present selfishly slanted world. 

*A transformed person, is simply a justified, adjusted soul in order that one might function fully in the Kingdom and into, Jesus’s likeness.  It requires a new heart and a tamed mind.    

AS CAREGIVERS, most of us know we are to grow and learn how to serve those entrusted to our care.
 But sometimes who we are can get lost in all the giving.  Really real is the deal.  If I am having a bad day, I should not act like all is well.  No fake plastered on smiles will do here.  I quote, “learn to smile from your liver”.  To me, this means to hunger and fill yourself with all that is God.  Then, no good thing will be withheld from you.  It might take some sitting at, The Feet, some meditating and some prayer.

Dancing at a wedding

DO I HAVE THE drive, or more appropriately in the caregiver’s world, the energy to live a crazy energetic *abundant, life?  I try to.  My previous post about the body states how I try to maintain a balanced triune being, body, soul and spirit.  And for me, for the most part, I do live a vibrant life, but I don’t always have the energy to dance a jig.  There are times when my creative life is setting on the couch after Zach is in bed, I light a candle, I make a cup of hot tea and pop in a favorite movie; usually I “watch” the flick with my eyes closed.  Exciting ay?

I try to carry verve inside of the constricting walls of caregiving and outside of those walls as well?  That life brought forth will look different in each household.  I believe we are purposefully created to happen wonderfully in our world, whatever that world looks like.

HOW OTHERS SEE ME is partly who I am also.  I am not sure all see me the same, but still, I know this to be a truth.  Behavior modification for the sake of being liked, outside of being real, is not who I am; as a christian that is called false piety.  False piety evokes in me the vision a pompous prig.  I try not to be this!  Not a pretty sight, nor much fun to be around.  The eyes and hearts of others know what is real and what is fake.

IN CLOSING, I, KAREN was given a feminine soul and placed inside of a woman’s body.  The feminine soul is a side of Father that compliments the male side, both are equal.  There is nothing about God that is less important than the other, all are needed to show the fullness of God.  My spirit is neither male, nor female and when I get to Heaven, to quote Jesus loosely, I will not be a sexual being, but like the angels.  I will be a transformed me, but me, in relationship with Father as He pleases and others; me the one who loves to nurture, who likes order and beauty, the culinary arts and creating by seeing through the lens of  a camera and writing with words on paper, I love old books, the smell of libraries, etc.    

Will I cook with Father in Heaven?  Might I be a part of the kitchen staff at the Marriage Supper?  Will a photographer be needed at that highly creative event?  Might I be involved in the decorating of the tables?  I wonder…..but here, in this life as a woman, showing the feminine side of God; am I using my gifts, am I being knit into the Karen-Jesus He intended?  Do I re-present Him well and am I at ease (“My yoke is easy…”) being His uniquely created being?

WHO WE ARE IS HIGHLY COMPLEX and dare I say, much like an iceberg.  It is partly who you know yourself to be, partly who others see you to be (listen and learn) and partly who you will come to be, this is the tip of the iceberg.  Partly we are the part of the iceberg under the water; the mystery.  
If we leave off our selfishness, not our personalities, our big bold beautiful selves will have more room to move about.
He broke the mold after creating you and I.  There will never be another, _________ created throughout all of eternity.  So love Him deeply for that, and so much more and appreciate who you are, value yourself, learn to love yourself and in this you will love others. 

Reading recommendations:

Who Switched off My Brain, by Dr. Caroline Leaf, The Art of Being You, by Bob Kilpatrick, and if you are an artistic soul, Walking on Water, by Madeline L’Engle.

REFLECT

CUPPA JOE, LEAN IN, BREATHE AND MEDITATE

Beginning a New Journey

OUR VIEW

NEW… this phrase does not find a comfortable home underneath the hair and skull of an obsessive compulsive person.  Same-same, that settles right tight between the purring ears.  However, sometimes, a family needs some new, or in this case can’t help that new is coming.  How do we prepare our loves that might not cope well with change for that very thing?  I am in the throws of this now.  First, I must get myself over the hump of a move after settling on this hilltop for nearly twenty-seven years.  Then I might be able to prepare Zach for what might be absolute upheavel.

IT MIGHT NOT MANIFEST as what I’m envisioning.  Change rarely does.  We’ve watched this “change” in job and possibly in location coming down a slippery pike for, oh, over a year now.  I’ve had to be willing (very difficult for a stick-in-the-mud like myself), and thus already…in my mind I’ve prodded myself to move on, straight up to Seattle, jogged up to Portland and on over to Bend.  Now…seriously?  Do we get to stay in our beloved valley?  I had to labor to get to the point of real willingness, not just saying, “OK, I’ll go” but actually being excited about going if that was on the docket of, the life and times of Web and Karen Staunton.  I started this post thinking we were moving, we did a gigantic purge of twenty-six years of “stuff” pushed into cabinets, closets and behind the storage shed (That.  Already obese with junk).  Oh the stuff we’ve acquired, stored and now chucked.  It feels much cleaner, lighter, like breathing fresh air after lungs full of thick smoke.

THIS PURGE, it’s healthy, whether we move, or stay and so is the mental willingness…empowering, yep, that’s the right word, as I let go of twenty-six years of memories jarred loose in the change-thing, I realize I will always have those memories whether the stuff stays, or goes (let someone else make a memory with it), I am now able to make room for more living and to push the save button and move on (not that I’ve gotten rid of it all. *shamefaced).  But now, I give thanks for being able to hatch and raise our family in this wonderful hilltop-hacienda.  To think of leaving as positive was no small feat.  I struggled (might still struggle).

AS we prepare Zach for this change…
HOW DO WE “move a rooted Zach” forward?  Will he melt down, stay melted down; not be the same happy man-child we’ve learned to work with?  Because meltdowns, they equal no fun and throbbing eardrums.  Still; meltdowns happen.
THERE ARE SMALL THINGS we can do, but first off…I believe in talking to, The Being Who Has The Power To Transform and positive brain waves that move before us and make the path smooth and easily followable: Whether we know it, or not these positive thoughts help the atmosphere around our children also.  If we are not dealing well with a situation it throws stumbling blocks into their world and it’s much more difficult for them to wade through these obstacles of fear and confusion than it is for us.
ALSO communicating to our children about the move and reassuring that all of their loved things will come along; even though Zach is nonverbal we assume he hears, because we really are unable to know what he is and isn’t able to process.
MAKE A PLAN as to what  moving day will look like.  Will the child’s room stay in tact till the morning of?  In our case this would need to be the case.  On top of that, Zach’s stuff would need to arrive and be set up before him and in a longer move, this might pose a problem.  *Note to self here, deal with one day at a time.  We would have to prepare, not only Zach, but ourselves for the long arduous days ahead of reestablishing Zach’s comforts and routine.  In a nutshell, prepare for the days ahead and then roust the good within to deal healthily with what is.

THIS is today’s post (actually started months ago and still we wait for answers to change); I do hope we are not prodded on, but…as I journal, what will tomorrow hold and am I willing?

MEANWHILE we have had a married daughter and hubby move from Portland to our basement…expecting our fifth grand child (due October, 6th).  Oh happy day!

RACHEL, TREVOR and BABY ELAITHIA

SON, JOSHUA graduated Full Sail University in August and has moved to Portland looking for work in the indi film industry.

JOSHUA, August 30th

FOUR BEAUTIFUL GRAND BABIES continue to grow and keep the memories coming.  

MONTANNA AND URIAH September 22nd

JULIANA and SAVANNAH September 19th

IMPROMPTU, it happens on Staunton Hill.  KEEP IT COMING, or move it on!

Feng Shui Redundancy, The Same Day Over and Over and….

Redundancy by its very nature negates creativity.  Is it even possible to live creatively, when we are stuck within the stifling walls of the same structure, a life-time of Groundhog’s Day (the comedy with Bill Murray) because someone we love, someone we care for has a malady and must live his/her life within the confines of obsessiveness and compulsivity?

Daily We Are Handed the Same Experience:  The list goes here.  It is the same every day.  How can we be made new in all this oldness; have sparkle and shine?  It has been said many times to those who care for loved ones, 'You have to have a life; you deserve a life.’  I understand the remark, but I do have a life.  Ultimately, we all need to iron out the life we’ve been given, not fear what may happen, or want a different life for a loved one faced with caregiving.  It’s true that sometimes my life feels confining, less free than I’d like, but that is only an illusion.  I am as free as anyone.  Freedom doesn’t always include mobility.  Freedom isn’t the ability to do what you want, it is the ability to do what’s right.

Most days I love my life and wouldn’t want any other and I find it extremely purposeful and artful…and free.   I have learned to love my life and the Life Giver.

This Ground Hog’s Day (the movie) existence has been my reality for nigh on seventeen years now and like Bill Murray’s character, I have figured out a thing or two, I am still excited when something new presents itself no matter how small; a new way to enjoy the same old thing because….this is my life:  Groundhog’s Day'ish.  My eyes look for ways to add color to the gray of redundancy.  We can be swooshed right into a new day, a new time when we look through open-thankful eyes.  The situation stays the same, I change, sometimes the situation changes, but always, we should remain playable to being transformed into the new creation God envisioned when He began re-creating us in that, “look with your whole being (behold)! all things become new”, way.  This isn’t just a nice saying, I have found this to be a living truth.

For Instance, two days ago my son and I were outside playing in the frosty yard, as we do every day rain, snow, sheets of ice etc…sometimes it is as simple as looking at what I have and being thankful; a view, the ability to do what I do, a day without rain, steam rising from a hot mug of something (I was very thankful for the nearly full length Patagonia down coat my kind husband bought for me this winter).  The scene was the same as every day, but I saw and appreciated what was there.  Sometimes something new needs to be dropped into “same”.  Say, a small mobile iPod speaker, now we are showered with inspiration as we kick balls from one side of the yard to the other; same was new.  I recently found it astounding that such a small thing as a new kind of tea can bring on a wide smile.
www.teavana.com
The soothing blend of rooibos tea and coconut drifting under my nose can take me mile after blissful mile down the road of boring.  Old made new because I choose to see blessings, I look, I behold what God is creating inside of me.  I might go my whole life without looking; observing with my body-soul-spirit what is really going on behind the curtain of my skin.




Today a Little Glitter in my gray, I got up early to work on this post and found our boy sitting up in bed with his entire library piled upon his brown bedspread with a Berenstine Bear book open before him as he worked through the stack; a change up from the confines of the usual; sitting on the floor and playing with his bin of stuffed animals.  Shine and a mom smile.

We Were Created with an inborn desire to make art; clean crazy creative, with our minds, with our eyes and our hands.  When we can’t read a book because we are tending; ear buds and an audio book work like magic.  When we can’t paint, or write…we study with our eyes, build stories in our head and take audio notes on our iPhone.  If we can’t bring culinary desires to fruition, we plan a gourmet meal in our head, lay out how the table will look with an antique table cloth, wooden candleholders and wheat grass as centerpiece and think…someday soon.  There are ways to enjoy redundant, there are always ways to enjoy life.

Open Wide the Eyes of Our Faces, of our hearts and minds.  I’d love to know what you come up with.  Creating and creativity of all kinds make me feel alive.

When dark clouds come, how do you Feng Shui that flung pooh?

Drying lavender we picked from
Shasta Lavender Farms.  It now adorns our home with its pungent healing aroma.


Dark days hit us all….It is learning how to feng shui the darkness and distraction, in order that the light might dominate and help reorder, a very full life and keep it on the calmer side, this is a helper to my joy.  It takes mind control (taking every thought captive), which by now, I should be proficient at, but alas, I am still crafting.  For me, it has been learning how to have dominion over useful, but often times dominating distractions such as television and electronics and distracting thoughts (just as God gave Adam and Eve dominion over every living thing in The Garden of Eden [we have the right stuff to do this]).  By “this”  I mean to take these “things” prisoner as it were (sometimes in our minds, where battles rage) and pull them into the spotlight of Truth.  The effect is, rather than being stuffed into a life that feels off, or just not right, a vibrant Life is dumped into my human mold as Light, which colors every corner of my created being.  This gives clarity, to make choices based upon the right information.  For life lived fully; to grow in love towards Him and those around me.  This doesn’t mean that from this point on everything I look at, think about, will be beautiful, but rather, what dominates is indeed shown in its true light and more easily categorized; are my thoughts useful to my situation, or do I need to capture them and bring them into the light.  Some dissipate in The Light and others are revealed and used, or are prayerfully considered in order that they might be dealt with properly.

The dried lavender now hanging
in our home.

Thoughts are things, not random wisps of smoke that vanish (Who Switched Off My Brain, by Dr. Caroline Leaf).  Taking them captive and categorizing themas, helpful,
or destructive is a very valuable thing.  The non-useful, or destructive get erased as we sleep and the useful are exercised and solidified in that same state.  This takes some practice and living in the moment, as they say, as well as being attentive to our thought lives.  When I am in transition from a cloudy spot and dragging my spirit and thoughts into the light-it helps to choose something soothing to help roll the head and heart along to that restorative state.  Music, art or creating something like a blog; reading a positive, or well written book, something creative that links me to The Creator, or meditating on a healing scripture.

Noticing beauty adds light

Restoration is a word I am in love with.  I like to fix run down things and make them beautiful and it takes me a good bit of time to adjust when anything jagged comes into my smooth world, especially if I can’t make it glisten.  Bad news I categorize as broken.  I don’t know why, but it scratches me up, I take it personally.  It takes going to The Giver of Life for the situation and for my own pricked bleeding emotions, that causes my heart to remember why it was created and how it was created.  Only then is the heavy burden eased allowing my life to return to its normal, healthy God centered light, so that I might tend Zach and my family from the positive, the beautiful spaces that lend themselves to healing.  Oh how I love the peace of faith, of knowing the real God who sees all and knows all, who cries, feels and holds His children through difficult times and laughs with us during celebrations!  Our daughter Rachel was just married last weekend and how I felt the smile of God on that union and that event.  I also feel His heart break and tears raining down on Zach’s situation.  He feels, I feel…we are becoming one, He understands me, though I am heartbroken to say, I hardly know the vast, I AM; what an adventure lies ahead.

Life, the Giver thereof keeps my load light and balanced; I start adjusting the weights with things I am picking up along the way and then "whoop-whoop-woah" as my cowboy daddy would say, I’m all over the road with legs of jello.

Heart feeling is how I operate.  I’ve noticed that I seem more pensive than most.  I felt…different growing up.  I was often teased as being a daydreamer, when in fact, everything, every word that came into my world I mulled over and over in my brain like a rock tumbler till it came out smooth and slick.  I have become okay with the fact that God is my manufacturer and this is how He made me to operate.  It has been a help in the way I tend my family, but especially the everyday chore of tending Zach.  I have rounded the corner of my sensitivities by thinking on good things, Philippians 4:8 has been a section of living-salvation for me.  Every situation can be sweetened with positive, helpful thinking.  Thinking on things that are honest, just, and pure and of good report seem to be a much better way to keep ones mind on The Good One and balance ones world in that, "resting in the Arms" position, if you will.  Not that jagged, sour things should never enter our world (we all have difficult things cross our paths), or pray for situations and others who are undergoing hardship, or hurts; that’s body-life, community.  It is the living frame of mind I’m talking about; what I do with darkness, or distraction.  I want a mind and body that work from the riches of God rather than the poverty and depravity of unregenerate man.  Disconnecting, or focusing on the horror of a situation never helped anyone.  Engagement, love and prayer, I have found, are not passive.

Good dwells in the world despite all the bad.  God made us all to operate best from love, to help, to pray, to bring The Light into every situation.  It has been scientifically proven, the human brain and body work best from a place of love, not fear.  I believe I can send that Love and Light through my prayers, because most days it is just little old me and Zach up here on the hilltop.  I pray for and over a situation while changing a diaper, hanging sheets on the line, or plopping dollops of oat/raisin loaded cookie dough onto parchment paper lined sheets-this gives me a great since of satisfaction.  I feel as though I am impacting the situation with rays of Light and Love like some sort of christian cupid.

White sheets drying in the sunshine.

Light enters, while I’m thinking on Goodness, Creation and that kind of Love that human love is only a shadow of.  The kind that cares deeply about the whole person, body, soul and spirit.

Lavender, white sheets hanging in the sunshine and the past two weeks of family and grand babies, a grand high-mountain wedding of a darling daughter, these are some of the good things I have been thinking on today.  His smile and His pleasure always show me the way home.

Sunset Light from Staunton Hill

Try not to light your face with a smile when 

you bite into these babies!

Gluten Free Lemon-Lavender Shortbread Cookies

½ cup pasture butter, softened

1/3 cup coconut palm sugar, or organic cane sugar

4 teaspoons grated organic lemon peel

1 Teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup Namaste, Perfect Blend flour

2 tablespoons plus 1-1/2 teaspoons non-gmo cornstarch

¼ teaspoon ground mace

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 rounded tablespoon of culinary lavender

Drizzle:

½ cup Confectioners’ sugar

2 to 3 teaspoons lemon juice

Directions

In a small bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in lemon peel and vanilla.  Combine the flour, cornstarch, mace and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.  (Dough will be crumbly.)  Shape into a ball.

On a lightly floured surface, press dough to ½-inch thickness.  Cut with a floured 1-inch fluted cookie cutter; place 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets.  Prick cookies with a fork.  Reroll scraps if desired. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes or until firm.  Cool for 2 minutes before carefully removing to wire racks to cool completely.

Combine confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice; drizzle over cookies