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

AUTISM AWARENESS DAY, un-feng-shui-ed

AUTISM AWARENESS DAY...It’s the end thereof.  Mommies and daddies all over the world spent twenty-four hours somewhat like this….

JUST BECAUSE-OR-MUST BECAUSE…

In honor of our son, Zachariah William who carries the torch of light and joy

IT IS MORE THAN "JUST" for Zach, it is “must”:  Thinking In Pictures, by Temple Grandin. Both the book and the movie shine an important and creative light into the world of Autism.  

ZACH HAS AN internal alarm clock (a groove not unlike the Mariana Trench located in his brain that wakes him between 1:30 and 3:00.  Time change, schmime change).  Those pesky must’s!  I slog down the stairs in my pj’s at 1:45 (Web and I alternate nights getting up with Zach, last night was my night to get up).  I make my way into Zach's room.  He’s out of bed playing with a bin full of stuffed toys, he’s stuck (stuck happens).  I wait…still waiting.  My back feels like a tight bungie, I lean over and grab the toys on the floor and toss them onto his bed then…after what seems like an hour, I lift the bin and place it on his bed (thinking out of sight…).  He stands wondering where his toys have gone (but he’s moving).  His sagging wet diaper is replaced with a nice dry one.  He and I schlep to the kitchen with his water cup.

ZACH flips toys across the carpet, I stare blankly he’s stuck again.  I keep saying, “water” to cue him, but it takes a while…finally, ten minutes later...we replace the water cup in the fridge door with the newly filled one.  He grabs the cold one….must because) then digs around in the silk leaves (he’s yanked off of my silk plant over the past two years), window clings and such that fill the metal sand bucket setting on the counter (it’s his special stash)…must because.  Were I not such a close observer of autism, I may say from afar, most of life is….just because.  However, I have concluded that from Zach’s compulsive nature, most of his obsessions are “must because's” for him.  So we grow patients, you know, those rare nerve endings that can take a licking and keep on ticking?  Yep, those tender whips.
He climbs back into bed; I’ve gotten his movie and computer up and running, I say goodnight and haul my goose fleshed body up the stairs and back to bed.



4:00, THE WORD “diaper” hits sleep dulled eardrums.  I feet-fumble-stumble down the stairs and into his room, his diaper is hugging his knees.  He wants it off.  The heavy insides do a back-flip to the floor.  I am so overly grossed out right now….., but there is no stopping him, and there’s a huge cow pie, aka “Zach-pie” on his clean rug!  He’s about to put his butt on his sheets, no time for medical gloves…darn those must’s, those must’s, those must’s!!  I grab a few wipes from the container beside his bed and do a quick swipe, good, but not good enough.  I don gloves, working quickly to clean him up, fit him to a new diaper and powder, lots of powder (all the while hoping the poop angel kept the sheets clean) and then….it’s the same routine as before, kitchen, water, dig in bucket, back to bed.  Poop angel fail….I wipe the bed with a handful of wipes… I’m not in the mood to change sheets at 4:am; his bed has been changed four times in the last four days.  He’s up for the day.  I am not.  He’s back in bed with cookies.  I'm back in bed fighting a hot flash and begging sleep to come.

Zach’s bed at 7:am after hours of playtime.

6:30, EXERCISE BIKE for interval training; Web has been out in his wood shop working since 4:00; Zach has every book from his bookshelf on his bed along with every ball from the closet and every stuffed animal from the bin that sets on his toy shelf.  His bed looks like the city dump (cleaner and smells better…today anyway).  I am reading, Save The Cat!, sweating profusely, hoping that the ride will pump my sleep heavy legs to life and that the read will glue my hinder parts to my desk chair.  I get coffee when I complete twenty grueling minutes!  Coffee!!!

7:00,  Coffee.  Wait, I meant, COFFEE!!!!

8:00, ...AND DAD BEGINS Zach’s morning routine.  Books are read, tickles are given (if Zach is in the mood to be tickled, otherwise…. “no-koko!").  Steam boils from the shower; towels, toothbrush ready, diaper and clothes set out…they are ducks in a pond; water everywhere: I draw, crush, and suck his meds and supplements into syringes and prepare his gluten, egg, dairy, peanut free breakfast.

Anti-seizure meds and supplements have to
be liquid.
Pill swallowing is a "mustn’t”.

8:20, I GIVE ZACH HIS MEDS, same place (near the kitchen sink), same position everyday, must because. His computer is moved to the table along with his toys.  Web sits at the table with him, shape toys, photo recognition, popsicle sticks in the slot….till Zach has had his fill.  Even more coffee.



8:45, ZACH EATS BREAKFAST on the sunken living room stairs (it’s his chosen place to eat his meals, except dinner which he takes on the kitchen floor).  Web and I have more coffee and engage in a quick conversation, “what are your plans today?”  “How are you feeling?”  I love you’s said and “Lets do lunch."

9:00 DIAPER change, whether he needs it or not, yep…must because.

9:10, OUTSIDE today we go directly to the yard to play kick-it (a game where multiple balls are kicked from one side of the yard to the other for hours sometimes).  He did not want to walk his trail today.  Sad.

New cup idea came to me yesterday.
It’s the tiniest things that bring a smile.
Jelly jar, plastic canning jar cap with a
hole drilled into the side. Insert straw.

Kick-it in the muddy yard.

9:30, INSIDE BRIEFLY for more balls and a drink of water.

10:00, INSIDE, YES, BRIEFLY for more balls and a drink of water.
It's Tuesday and from 10:00 to 2:00 we have respite; Aunt Linda.  I take a walk, get dressed and delve into this blog.

10:30, SNACK TIME for Zach.  He gets his cookies (Oatmeal) reads his books and Farm and Ranch magazines with Aunt Linda.  They snuggle on the couch and watch Sesame Street (oddly, I’m jealous, this is my favorite “Zach time").

11:30, LUNCH TIME, pork-turkey veggie loaf, apple, baby carrots and pickles.

12:00, walk down the love trail.  Back for another round of kick-it, or two, perhaps three…must because.

Zach waiting for mom to come read
"Aur-aur”.

2:30-3:30, BEDTIME routine.  We begin by hauling all the balls that have been taken outside for the day inside, two heaping buckets.  His computer goes back onto his nightstand, the movie, Homeward Bound is slipped into the dvd player, the blinds and curtains are closed, white noise turned on….every detail is checked, “must because”.  Zach removes his own shoes and socks and gets a drink of water.  He goes back to bed to remove his pants, drinks more water (which is always done in the kitchen…must because), back to the bedroom to get the toys he wants to sleep with and he climbs into bed pulls the covers up, grabs a book and waits for mom to come read.

Zach’s favorite page in The Tortoise and The Hare.  It’s all in the
 drawl…"weellll, Slim, do you want Jelly on
that peanut butter?” (you have to have
played the Living Books computer game to understand)

3:45, STORIES ARE READ (we’ve been reading the same stories for 17 years (The Tortoise and The Hare, Just Grandma and Me, Arthurs Teacher Trouble and a book of family photos. Today he chose all new books.  What’s with that?!  This is our time to lie together, talk about his day and we often do EFT (emotional freedom tapping).  He loves one particular side of his head tapped.  I adore this part of our day; I look forward to laying beside him, his soft hair up against my cheek as we read, laugh and connect telepathically, spiritually.  Serenity and peace (more precious than gold) fall heavy.

Dinner picnic style!

4:00 HE TOOK his dinner (in the hallway) outside of his room picnic style (this kid knows how to live!).

5:00, HE'S ASLEEP.  (Yes, we have tried putting him to bed later to see if he sleeps in a bit, but no).
Needless to say, it is now 8:30 and I’m thinking tea and horizontal.  Web and I, on a typical evening, will be found in bed yawning around 7:00, perhaps watching a movie, or reading with our ceramic buckets of rooibos tea.

(Common things this day didn’t include, a seizure and a loud meltdown; thankful!)

Ahhhhh, till 1:30 or 2:00….Good night!