Julie and I have been all sorts of antsy to get started on the remodel of my parents house. After 6 months of being in limbo it has been great to finally make a plan. Being unable to execute that plan though has been nigh unbearable. It’s like being on the starting line of a race, you’re told to get on your mark and get ready, but nobody ever yells “Go!”
Somebody yell “GO” already!
I can’t even say for sure that we’re ready. I don’t know that we know for sure what to do first, or if my parents have any set-in-stone plans. I’m sure that time is going to fly by this summer, so we probably should have hashed some of that out already. C’est la Vie.
What to do next
We have been having discussions about what to do next. We need to make arrangements to get the rest of our stuff from Missouri out here to Utah. Things that aren’t coming to Utah need to be sold, like our livestock and probably the tractor.
I did go to the high school and middle school and registered both Caitlin and Joshua for school next year (another post on this later). At some point we’ll have to see about getting new UT paperwork (Drivers Licenses, car registration, etc). I hope that can wait awhile though.
Mostly though, things haven’t changed since we made the decision to stay in Utah. I keep going to VA appointments 2x a week. Julie keeps the kids alive and doing well in school. The difference now is that we feel good about having a plan, and antsy about getting started on it.
I’m going to try to add a picture to the end of each post from now on so that you can see us. I’m sure the pics will be more appreciated than my words anyway!
Had an incredibly vivid dream last night. The length of the time span involved seems insanely long. It began with us living in the house in Myrtle, MO. I came home from a trip to Little Rock and found all of the kids gone. When I entered the house I heard Julie screaming in fear and pain. I ran into the bedroom to find a guy on top of her, in the process of raping her.
With just a moment to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing, decided I couldn’t use my sidearm with Julie there, so I jumped on the guy and a fight ensued. It wasn’t very long until I had him in a choke hold, which I held until I was sure the guy was dead.
The dream skipped the dealing with the clean up of that event; no dealing with police, hospital, etc. However, a few weeks later we found out Julie was pregnant.
Pregnancy
The pregnancy was what this dream was really about. I was dealing with my wife being pregnant from a rapist and making decision on how to deal with it. My sympathies to anyone and everyone who has had to do this in reality.
The majority of the dream was the discussion and decision making Julie and I went through. We seemed to have several discussions about giving the kids up for adoption or whether we would raise it. We didn’t discuss the idea of an abortion. They weren’t fights, with one of us wanting to get rid of it and the other wanting to keep it. They were discussions with both of us discussing things like whether we would resent the kid because of how he was conceived, how the other kids would treat him, how other family would react, and whether we thought we could love him, etc. (We knew it was a boy somehow???).
So my brain spent the majority of the night discussing with itself the merits of keeping a kid conceived by rape. I suppose the benefit of such a dream is that it makes the decision real, it adds the feeling of being an actual decision needing to be made. A theoretical discussion would cover the same topics, but without the real emotions involved.
Decision
And for what its worth, my brain decided that we’d keep such a kid. If it were reality I don’t know if we’d make that decision. Obviously Julie’s real emotions/reasoning would be different than what my dream created for her. I assume my thoughts and emotions would be the same, because I thought it was real this time. Hopefully we’ll never have to find out Julie’s real-world thoughts on it.
Would you keep a kid conceived by rape? Do you think you’d be able to ever love the kid? and not look at him with resentment or anger? In my dream I thought I could, but I don’t know if I’d really be able to. I think I’d want to keep the kid, but I think it’d be harder to KNOW that your emotions would be positive toward it.
Dream and Reality collide
I’ve said before how I can have a hard time telling the difference between the real and the imagined. In my dream we had gone through the fire and moved here to PG, just like we really did. So my dream concluded with us living here like we really are, only Julie had just had the baby.
As I woke up I reached over to find Julie and she wasn’t in bed. So I thought she must be up feeding the new and fictitious baby. I laid there for a good 30 minutes thinking about the kid and dealing with my emotions about him (I think we named him John). After at least a half an hour it started to dawn on me that it wasn’t real. That I still only had 8 kids. That those memories were of non-real events. That is hard to accept sometimes because the emotions going through me were very real.
After stretching out my back and shoulders (often required to stand up) I got up and out of bed. When I got to the staircase it fully hit me that it wasn’t real. JR was at the bottom of the stairs and seeing him confirmed it was just a dream. I remembered that just yesterday I had known that JR was the youngest.
Count them! Only 8 little Jensen kids!!
Conclusions…
You mean other than that I’m psychotic???
Yes, I’d consciously kill a violent rapist I caught in the act.
Yes, I’d be willing to keep a kid conceived like that.
Yes, my medication should probably be working better.
I am going to start publishing a post each time we get out and go running. They should each be entitled “Running Log” followed by the date. I don’t expect many of you to read them, so I’m giving you a heads up. I’m making the record for the kids. Feel free to read them if you’d like.
We went to the PG Rec Center today after school. We wanted to go to the High School track and do 15-30’s, but the football team was out practicing. I didn’t think the coach would appreciate me blowing a whistle every 15 seconds while he was conducting a practice.
I can’t use the whistle inside the Rec Center, but we really wanted to do sprints today. So we improvised of course. The track is a big oval (like the typical 1/4 mile track at a football field) only smaller. This track is 6.5 laps per mile. In order to facilitate sprints we decided on sprinting the long sections and walking the curves/short sides.
This event was not timed. Everyone from Julie down to Nikki ran 26 sets of sprints. That was 13 laps (2 sprints per lap) for a total of 2 miles running/walking. Andrew only ended up running 8 laps and then walked with JR and me. JR crawled an entire lap while I walked beside him with my cane.
Every one did fantastic. They were each exhilarated by being able to complete the task. Julie was especially glad to finish. After just 4 laps she looked like she was going to have a hard time doing all 13. She kept going and faced each sprint one at a time. She was (and always is) exceptional.
Josh finished the fastest of course. He lapped everyone 2x, and lapped Julie 3 times. He sprinted all-out each and every time and was exhausted at the end. His effort is always outstanding.
Caitlin is not the strongest runner, but her effort was also excellent. She ran hard and did great. She was all smiles that the end. Accomplishing hard tasks brings her a real sense of accomplishment. I hope that continues throughout her life.
Julie and I are very happy to announce that we have made some plans for our future. There is still a lot of info we don’t have, and so nothing long-term is settled, but we’ve decided we’ll expect the worse, use it as a starting point, and plan from there. At this point though, even being able to make one decision about the future seems like an extraordinary event. So I apologize in advance if this announcement seems small to you… it isn’t to us!
This Summer
After my parents complete their celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary in May, a major remodel of their home will begin. The purpose of this remodel will be to make the necessary improvements and repairs for our family of 10 to move in sometime before next school year begins (late Aug or Sept?).
You read that right, Julie and I will be moving into my parents home in Utah and are planning on living there indefinitely. This will give us plenty of time to figure out where we are in the other aspects of our lives. The hardest part about this is going to be telling all of our friends back in MO that we aren’t coming back. We’ve longingly looked forward to going back there from the moment we landed here.
Mental health care
The biggest reason for staying here in the SLC area instead of heading back to the farm is so that I can continue receiving the VA care here that I just wasn’t getting back in MO or AR. If I’m going to ever complete my journey for mental wellness I need to get some professional help. I’ve been getting that here. And seeing what I have available here, compared to what I was receiving, makes it clear that what I was getting, wasn’t nearly what I needed.
I know that with PTSD and other mental health issues that there isn’t a “cure” – no person has told me I can be cured – but that they can help me to overcome the symptoms and to live a more normal and less stress-filled life. So we’ll stay here until we think that I’ve reached a level of success that we are comfortable with.
We anticipate this will be a matter of years. There is no test to determine when this is “done.” It’s something we can’t put a date on for completion; maybe it’ll be decades. Going through the Canines With A Cause course is anticipated to take about 2 years to complete, so it would be at least that long, and probably much longer. We’ll stay as long as it takes.
Finances
Our financial situation was another important aspect of this decision. Due to the huge financial blow that losing the house was, we aren’t in a position to rebuild on the farm right now anyway. Even if the insurance reverses course and covers us though, we still have made the mental health treatments our first priority, and would just hold those funds until we are ready to go back.
We just don’t have the funds to cover both a rental here AND to cover the mortgage. The house in MO doesn’t exist, but we are still paying for it. Our only income is my VA disability. There is just no way to live on that VA income if we have to pay for rent and a mortgage. There’s not enough left over to live on. I’ve covered that in this post. Moving in with my parents eliminates that need for rent. Really, from a financial aspect, this is our only option. Thankfully it is one we can live with.
2-5 Year Plan
This is where it gets harder to discern the future. We don’t know when/if I’ll ever be better, so making plans is difficult. Caitlin and Joshua will graduate high school here if we stay that long. JR will be old enough for Kindergarten in that time. If we’re here that long though Julie will finally be able to pick fruit off of a tree she’s planted! That would be nice!
We’ve planted 40+ fruit trees and never picked a piece of fruit!
I would still like to plan on moving us to a sail boat at some point. Those plans are obviously hard to make though. Maybe that’ll be in the 10 year range for planning?? I started following about 4 blogs from people who have done it though. I’ll continue to read those and keep dreaming and making plans. I’ll also keep updating this blog, if for no other reason than to document our activities for our kids.
Somewhere along the line either I’ll get well enough to find work, or Julie will need to. VA income alone will never be enough to rebuild with (or purchase a boat). No matter what we do we are certain it will involve a good amount of juggling and compromise.
Additional Benefits
My parents are thrilled with the idea of us moving in. They’ve been asking us to do it for years. One of the main reasons they like the idea is that they like to travel. They would often spend months at a time with us in MO or AR. Eventually they would have to leave though because something needed to be done at the house. With us living there, they can now travel and not worry about how the house is fairing. They will travel when they want and come home to see the grandkids when they want. They make it sound like they will basically turn the house over to us and will come visit occasionally.
Moving in with them also gives us access to their 2.5 acres. That is enough land for us to have another milk cow. We won’t ship Lady across the country, but will find a mini-jersey here for us. We can also garden and plant fruit trees (again). I think we can have chickens too. All of these will help with the financial burden we are expecting. The farm-style life we love is still accessible.
I can also pursue the service dog that I was hoping to get from Canines With A Cause. We think that will be a big asset in my path to mental wellness. And since our plans begin with my becoming well, we’re looking forward to that.
And of course I couldn’t give a list of benefits without mentioning being close to family. We’ll obviously be close to my parents. But additionally, almost all of our family still lives along the Wasatch Front. My only sibling lives here, and all but one of Julie’s does too. We might be able to make it to a family reunion for the first time in quite a while 🙂
The Take Away
Our plans are malleable. We could beat them into any shape we choose. We aren’t thrilled that this is basically our only viable option (but we are thrilled that our only option happens to be a good one). Returning to our uber-supportive friends in MO would be awesome, but because of the care I’m receiving here, it just seems foolish to leave when receiving that treatment is our first priority.
I’m not going to give up on sailing, and Julie will not give up on the farm. As soon as we feel like I am closer to being … normal (we can’t say “cured”) … we will think about making plans to move on. If we happen to have enough funds available to think about life aboard a boat, then perhaps we’ll make it happen. If not, then the farm might beckon as well.
So stay tuned… hopefully a whole world of adventure still lies ahead!
