When the package arrived, I held my breath as I pulled it out of the box and slowly unzipped the protective bag it was in. I stepped into the dress with Emily’s help. As I stood in front of the mirror, I couldn’t believe my reflection.

  Not only did it fit perfectly, but it had the same type of sleeves that were on the dress I had picked out to rent, and a bodice and high neckline made of beautiful lace. Nancy loaned me her wedding veil. I look back now and marvel at the miracle dress—perfectly styled, formed, and fitted just for me. I knew that my heavenly Father had provided this gift to make my wedding day special.

  Another friend from work made us a wonderful three-tiered cake and created all the silk flower arrangements for the wedding party. Immediately after the ceremony, she would repurpose my bouquet as a decoration for the bridal table at the reception. I valued her frugality and understanding.

  David finished his training and flew to Dallas the night before our wedding. On December 16, 1989, Bob Carpus walked me down the aisle. I carefully measured my steps, looking around at all the family and friends that showed up for us that day. I was sad that Mom couldn’t be there, but I was grateful for everyone else who came. It was a day of celebrating young love, and everyone was happy for us.

  A family friend paid for my honeymoon attire, and my college friends, led by Madlin, pooled their funds for David and me to stay at a nearby hotel on our wedding night. As we began our life together, I reveled in the joy of the moment.

  We spent the last part of our honeymoon celebrating Christmas with David’s grandparents, retreating to “the honeymoon suite”—the guest bedroom in their home—at night. Grampa Roger and Grammy Nancy’s generosity made our shoestring-budget honeymoon everything we could have hoped for and more. As we got ready to leave, Grammy packed up our car with brand-new bedding, household items, and yummy treats for the road. There was barely room for us!

  Soon David shipped out to Okinawa, Japan, to begin active duty, and I was left in Lewisville trying to figure out how to obtain a US passport and a visa so I could join him overseas. I only had a Mexican birth certificate from Chihuahua, Mexico. I went to Congressman Dick Armey’s office in Denton, Texas, to ask for his help. I sat down with one of his assistants to recount an abbreviated version of my life story.

  When I was done, the assistant asked, “Can you get in touch with your mother?”

  “I don’t have any idea where she is,” I said.

  “Okay, we’ll get this done another way.” We based my citizenship off of my mother, since that would be proof enough, and less complicated than my father. I spent the next few months sending off for my mom’s high school and college transcripts and the birth certificates of her first five children, all born in the United States. After two trips to the passport office in Houston, I was finally issued a passport.

  “This is your only proof of citizenship,” the kind lady at the agency told me. “Be sure never to let your passport expire.” My passport is still my only proof that I am a citizen of the United States.

  Finally, in April 1990, I bought a one-way ticket to Okinawa, Japan. I believed all my dreams were coming true.

  We started our family in Japan with the birth of our son, David Joziah. After experiencing pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, among other scary symptoms, and then thirty-six hours of labor, I finally gave birth to him by C-section. Even after tending to all of those babies as a young girl, when the nurse came to discharge us from the hospital, I thought with a touch of alarm, What do I do if he cries? Not having family around to help left me feeling a bit vulnerable, especially in a foreign country.

  I felt a strange dichotomy in Japan. Being away from Mark and Lillian’s children had its benefits, namely that I wasn’t reminded of their parents’ tragic deaths on a daily basis. But I missed being connected with my large family and knowing everything that went on in the lives of my siblings, nieces, and nephews. Though David and I enjoyed living abroad, as months passed, cracks in our marriage began to surface, much like cracks in the walls of a house when the foundation starts becoming compromised. I chose to ignore these marital cracks, thinking things would get better in time. I couldn’t wait to return to the United States, which we did in January 1992.

  That same year, our son Caleb was welcomed into the world by Amy Grant’s new song, “Breath of Heaven,” which I had on repeat mode on my CD player. We brought him home from the hospital on Christmas Eve, the words of the song echoing in my heart forevermore.

  Be forever near me, Breath of heaven.

  Celia surprised me by buying my mom a plane ticket to come help me after Caleb was born. Celia joined us for part of the visit as well. Any bitterness I might have felt toward Mom began to lessen once I saw her interacting so tenderly with my children and caring for me. I was tandem-nursing the two boys, and my mom’s concern that Caleb wouldn’t get enough breast milk was so endearing to me. She had tried to breast-feed her children, but would “dry up after a few weeks,” she told me. The tension in our relationship eased a bit.

  When my son Jacob was born in 1994, within months we realized he needed surgery on his skull because his soft spot had closed up too quickly. I asked Mom to come help me again. She told me she would pray about it. I fumed at the notion that she would have to pray before deciding whether to come help one of her children. My own mothering instincts couldn’t fathom such a response. She did end up coming after all, and I was thankful she was there.

  In 1995, I headed for Dallas with my three sons to attend the wedding of Mark and Lillian’s oldest daughter, Emily. Suddenly the drought ended, and family surrounded me—Celia, Rena, and several of my brother Heber’s children I’d never met before. We greeted each other warmly, made introductions, and snapped pictures at a frenetic rate.

  But the joyous event was a stark reminder of the losses we had endured. As Emily walked down the aisle with a surrogate for Mark, my efforts to choke back tears proved futile. Celia and I both cried through the entire wedding as we faced afresh the pain of losing Mark and Lillian. A photo of them on their wedding day positioned in a place of honor magnified their absence.

  My decision to attend Emily’s wedding wasn’t motivated by obligation—I wanted to be there. In some respects, I felt as though my presence somehow represented Mark and Lillian and kept their spirits alive. For years I carried within me the self-imposed weight of being their representative at these milestone events. Nothing would have kept me away from the children during that time period. Embracing them and watching them grow brought me great joy. But sorrow always accompanied the joy, inseparable twins at every event. Tears of joy and sorrow welled up and spilled over because I had never properly grieved Mark’s and Lillian’s deaths. Back then, I didn’t know how. I only knew how to compartmentalize the ache in my heart as I numbed the pain of my grief.

  With a husband and three little boys to care for, life never slowed down. Consequently, I allowed busyness to push aside my grief. But Emily’s wedding, and every other happy event that followed, like summer visits from the children and all of their graduations from high school and college, reopened my wounds, ushering in the worst heartache I’d ever known.

  When we returned home from the wedding, I was exhausted. That night, I had a dream that I was standing at the sink washing dishes, watching birds through the window dodge and weave in an airborne game of tag. Suddenly, a brown van screeched to a halt in the driveway in front of the house. Out jumped members of the “bad side” of my family, including my brother Heber. Each of them carried guns and assault rifles. They stormed into our house before I could run to lock the front door.

  Just as I entered the living room, they sprayed the entire area with bullets. Shot in the stomach, I fell to the floor, face first. The shots hadn’t killed me, and I felt thankful to be alive. Still, I knew that if I got up, they would simply shoot me again. But if I pretended I was dead, maybe they would leave me alone and I could go find my children and protect them from this evil.

  I have to get to my boys. But if I move, it’s all over. I felt powerless to help my own children. Heber and my other family members could have already found my sons asleep in their rooms and killed them all.

  Just as I started to push myself up off the floor, I woke up from the nightmare, drenched in sweat, my heart racing. I lay awake the rest of the night, covers tucked up to my chin, the horrible scenarios playing out in my mind.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, I was with my friend Diana at the park. She had three young boys, too, and when we could, we arranged playdates with each other for our kids. As the boys played, we sat on a bench and I told her about the nightmare. She listened intently, her face registering an array of emotions. I valued her empathy and thanked God that she was kind enough to listen.

  As soon as I reached the end of the narrative, Diana reached out and placed her hand on my knee. “Do you have someone at your church you can talk to? Like a women’s ministry director?”

  “No,” I responded. “I don’t think so.”

  “A woman at our church does lay ministry counseling. If I make an appointment for you, would you go?”

  I stared at her, shocked yet hopeful at her offer. It had not occurred to me that I might need a counselor, and I wouldn’t have known where to begin looking for one. Diana understood that I wasn’t even capable of following through on contacting this woman and scheduling a time to meet. I whispered, “Yes.”

  “Would you like me to pick you up and take you? Or could I babysit the boys while you go?”

  I glanced over to the swings, where our sons squealed with excitement the higher they went. Diana isn’t simply suggesting I get counseling. She wants to facilitate the process. I was touched by this caring friend. “If you can babysit the boys, I’d be so grateful.”

  Two days later, Diana watched my boys while I went to the morning appointment she had scheduled for me while David was at work. He was glad that I was going to talk to someone. As I drove to the church, I wondered what I would say. To this day I can’t remember the name of the lay counselor, or the name of the church for that matter, but I poured out my heart for a solid hour. I told her about my unbelievable family of origin and the vivid nightmare I had just experienced days before.

  The woman wisely told me, “Anna, you need more help than what I can offer here.” She handed me the business card of a licensed therapist. “Joy, with Samaritan Pastoral Counseling Ministry, did her doctoral thesis on cults. She will not only understand what you need in order to heal, but she’ll also understand and empathize with where you’ve been.”

  The counselor offered her services on a sliding scale, making them affordable, and I started meeting with her every week.

  At our first appointment, she wasted no time getting to the root of the issue. “Tell me about your relationship with your dad.”

  “He was never around, and we dealt with it.” Stoic Anna took over, my last-ditch effort to protect myself from baring my soul and facing my tragic past.

  “Tell me more about that. What do you mean when you say, ‘we dealt with it’?”

  I literally felt my defenses wavering, the walls I’d built up and hidden behind for two decades crumbling before me. I told her about being abandoned in Mexico by my mom, about Rafael’s advances and Antonia’s humiliation of us children, about working like a slave for Dan Jordan, and about not having anyone around to protect me.

  Joy listened. She nodded at appropriate times. She asked probing questions to lead me further and further along the path of self-examination. I wasn’t exactly a willing participant, but I felt I didn’t have any other choice. Though I found it difficult to open up my heart about the experiences I had endured, little by little I cracked open the spaces that had been locked down tightly for decades. I felt exposed and unprotected as I allowed the emotions to surface. Oftentimes I felt like I was drowning and couldn’t breathe as I became overwhelmed by the experience of actually speaking aloud the atrocities we had endured as children.

  One afternoon early in the process, Joy explained in her soft voice, “I call it peeling back the layers of an onion.” Each time we met, I progressed a little bit more. I came to understand that it wasn’t just about growing up without a dad. Yes, that was part of it. But my experiences went far beyond that. Obviously, my dad didn’t protect me. But even more than that, he didn’t care about any of his children or our well-being. He actually put us in harm’s way. He allowed others to demean and abuse me and to treat me like a slave. He gave orders to have us sent to Mexico and allowed me to be groomed for sexual abuse and for an eventual marriage. Joy helped me explore how that abandonment and lack of fatherly provision and protection still affected me.

  I slowly and painfully morphed from the unemotional person I’d been trained to be my entire life into someone who knew how to shed appropriate tears about the incredible losses I had endured. Women who live in a polygamist culture can’t possibly bear up under most of what they have to endure without shutting down emotionally. What woman of sound mind can wholeheartedly deal with her husband having sex with other women on a regular basis? When a powerful, narcissistic man manipulates multiple women into marrying him and sharing him with their “sister-wives,” they learn to cope with the sheer lunacy of it by compartmentalizing their emotions. Suddenly so many aspects of my life crystallized—why my mom never cried, why she always defended my father, why she obeyed him without question. I’d been raised to act the same way.

  In the beginning, I never cried during counseling. Like any good cult follower, I had learned to keep my emotions in check. I think the feelings side of me had been suppressed for so long that I didn’t know how to express emotions, especially sadness and grief. I sat in Joy’s office for months sharing only surface events and feelings. As she gently probed and chipped away at the walls I’d erected, I occasionally shed a tear or two, but that was it. As soon as a tear fell, fear or instinct kicked in. I would quickly change the subject to avoid going deeper and confronting the core issues and emotions. Bottom line: I didn’t want to go there because I feared it would be like a breaking dam—uncontrollable once the water broke through.

  Over time, my defenses wore down. Joy’s insightful questions and empathetic responses helped me learn to trust her. With that trust came authenticity. I began to share more intimate parts of my journey. And with that sharing came the tears. So many tears. Once I opened those floodgates, my worst fears came true and I felt like I’d never be able to shut the gates again.

  Joy and I met together for almost five years before I reached the point where I could sit in her office and grieve, freely letting the tears flow. Not the pretty, photogenic tears that a leading lady sheds when her boyfriend goes off to war, but gut-wrenching, heaving sobs that smeared my makeup and left my stomach muscles sore. David supported my efforts to deal with my past, though he couldn’t understand the depth of the anguish I faced confronting such emotional experiences.

  And so we went on. Joy helped me peel off the layers. I shared intimate aspects of myself—deeply rooted fears and insecurities. I cried. Occasionally, I cancelled appointments in a futile effort to avoid the pain of another layer being exposed. During that time, the cracks in my marriage reappeared, and again I plastered and painted over them, ignoring the signs that the foundation needed repair. Neither of us knew how to face the issues head on.

  Two other great blessings came into our lives during this time. I gave birth to our two precious daughters, Kristina in 1996 and Hannah in 1998. I loved my boys, but having daughters seemed to complete me as a woman. I would joke and say, “We have a ‘full house’; three of one kind and two of another.” I was mostly a stay-at-home mom during those years, though I took odd jobs at times to help make ends meet. I was a good seamstress and took in sewing work often. Once I used leftover fabric to make matching dresses for me and the girls for Easter. David’s salary as a sergeant in the Marine Corps barely kept our meager bills paid. I gladly gave up small luxury items to be able to stay home and raise my children. During that time, I taught the boys to read as they became old enough, and I loved homeschooling them.

  I continued meeting with Joy and pursued my wholeness and healing. At the same time, the foundation of my marriage was shaken to the core, and in the spring of 1999 David and I separated and eventually divorced.

  It was at that point in my counseling that Joy urged me to lighten my load so I could concentrate my efforts on my grief journey. “I encourage you to take everything off yourself. Think about it. Grief requires a lot of energy. So give yourself permission to not take on anything new. Instead, learn how to say no. Minimize and simplify. Allow yourself time and space to take care of Anna and your kids.”

  I did as she suggested. I stopped volunteering at church on Sunday morning and Wednesday night and let go of outside commitments one by one, until I was left with no place to hide.

  Finally, as a divorced, single mother of five young children, I arrived at a point where my defenses were completely removed and I was left utterly exposed. I reached a place where I could grieve my fatherlessness. Though I’d always known I never had a father who told me I was beautiful or called me his princess, or placed my feet on his to dance around the living room, or cross-examined a boy who came to pick me up for a date, I finally understood how that extreme lack affected me as a grown woman—how it impacted every aspect of my marriage and parenting.

  When I finally allowed myself to acknowledge what I’d missed out on, it took several more months to fully grieve the process and heal. Those aching, turn-myself-inside-out months hurt as much physically as they did emotionally. I cried so violently during appointments that my abdominal muscles hurt for days after. I would compose myself before leaving Joy’s office, but regularly found myself crying again. Sometimes I cried so hard I couldn’t see straight to drive. I remember pulling over and sitting in my car sobbing, and then willing myself to regulate my breathing and stop the tears so I could finish my drive back home.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26