Wait! I'm Getting Married?!?

Large group of us from Holy Ground Mission. I am in the middle on the second row. That is my sister, Nancy, in front of me with her sleeve covering her face.

I loved school. I know, I'm probably in the minority, but I really loved going to school. I think the main reason was that in school I actually had the chance to get an A and feel like I was doing something right. At home I never really felt that approval. My mom was very much an old-school housewife. All she ever wanted in life was to get married, have children, and keep house. She was very domestic and couldn't understand why I was not. My dreams were bigger. I wanted to maybe be a movie star or a newspaper or tv reporter. I wanted to travel and see the world.

One of the guys who moved to the mission was Wayne Hancock. He played the guitar and sang and wrote a lot of his own songs. He was the person who introduced me to the guitar. He also gave me a guitar and a book that helped me figure out a few chords. I loved playing House of the Rising Sun and Leaving on a Jet Plane. Most of my time as a 14 year old was spent reading books and playing my guitar.

My mom just couldn't understand why I didn't want to learn how to sew, clean house, help with laundry, and get the clothes folded just so. I did enjoy baking cakes and I always helped with dinner, doing such things as peeling potatoes and washing dishes. I also enjoyed being outside and exploring the land. Seemed like the boys weren't really expected to do any housework. All they had to do was maybe help bring in the wood for the fire. Gee, sometimes I wished I was a boy.

Mom just couldn't understand why I would waste so much time just sitting around reading. She saw it as me being lazy and would ask me things like, "Why are you so interested in reading? Do you want to be like those people in your books?" To which I would reply, well, no, I just loved stories. It was an escape from reality for me. I got to experience the world through books and just get lost in the story. My siblings were the same. We would get to go to the library once a week and each of us would bring home a stack of books. I usually had read all mine and then started reading my brother's books.

When I was 15, I started reading more romance novels by authors like Danielle Steel and Grace Livingston Hill. I always had boyfriends growing up, but I knew little about romance. I had certainly kissed some boys but that's it. None of the romance novels I read said anything about sex—just that they got married and lived happily ever after. I had no desire to get married and certainly no desire at 15 years old to have children! I didn't even understand how sex and having babies really worked.

Store-Bought Dress

By this time, there were quite a few families living at Holy Ground Mission in Texas—I think we had maybe 120 people at this time. Wayne (the person who gave me the aforementioned guitar) and his wife Linda moved there along with their friend, Larry. Wayne and Linda were young hippies, and I immediately felt a connection with them. Their friend Larry was single, almost 30 years old and I thought he was so cute. They were the coolest people to me and let me hang out with them a lot. We spent a lot of time listening to Wayne sing and play his guitar.

Linda would let me help her with her children. She and I loved to play Scrabble. Linda wore cute "store-bought" clothes. I thought she was beautiful and I wanted to look just like her. I just never appreciated that mom made all my clothes. I wanted to have "store-bought" clothes. I think I just wanted to be like the other teenagers I went to school with. At one point Linda gave me a blue sailor type dress with a white collar and a red tie and white buttons going down the front. I loved that dress so much!

Missionary to Mexico

In September of 1973, I started in the 10th grade. My dad had been talking to me about being a missionary to Mexico all summer, so I made sure I took Spanish that year. I would be turning 16 that December and we were going to start a new Holy Ground Mission in Mexico. By the end of November, my dad decided that I no longer needed to go to school because I would be going to Mexico to be a missionary. So, on December 5, my dad took me out of school. I didn't want to leave school, and my favorite teacher, Mrs. Law, was crying and asking why in the world I was going to quit school. I assured her that I would continue to learn but now was needed in Mexico.

I felt so proud that I would be entrusted with this mission. My mom bought a large trunk and we packed everything I owned in it. About 75 of us travelled from the Texas mission to Mexico in a a big green bus and several smaller vehicles. Everyone was going to stay for a few weeks to lend a hand to get the mission up and running, and a few of us were going to stay there and live after everyone else went back home.

Wayne Hancock and Larry Lucas. This picture looks like from Mexico but I'm not sure.

Wayne and Linda and their little family (I think they had 2 children then), Larry, and another family (Alfred and Margaret and their children) were staying.

And then there was me.

The mission itself was situated on a beautiful piece of land and had a lovely mountain as a backdrop. It had one very large dilapidated building that had been abandoned for who knows how long. It was like an enormous barn with very few interior walls. No heat or air conditioning, but we were used to that. It had a huge front room, a small kitchen and I think a couple of bathrooms—but no working plumbing. Maybe it was some kind of a gymnasium before? I really have no idea.

So that first night we all put sleeping bags on the huge floor and slept together in the enormous room. It was so cold and there were rats crawling around in the darkness. You could hear them crawling and scratching all through the night. Some people had their shoe strings gnawed, but no one was injured as far as I can remember. Between the sounds of the rats and babies crying, I don't think any of us got much sleep. Ugh.

For the next several days, the men spent their time putting together walls of two-by-fours to divide off the space and then putting in better doors and sealing off holes in the outside walls to cut down on the wind blowing in. Several rat traps were set and a sort of upstairs room was being built on a second story landing. It was small and the only access to the room would be by ladder. I had no idea who this is for...

School Girl Crush

After 3 days there, things became a lot more comfortable. Larry had asked me to take a walk with him in the mountain behind us. In the year before we came to Mexico, Larry had been invited to have dinner with us several times. There was a small group of us that walked 4 miles every morning at 5:00 am and I used to get up early to walk with them before school because Larry went too. I thought he was really cute but very quiet. We never talked or anything; I just admired him from afar. My friend, Jean Ann, and I used to giggle whenever he was around. Sometimes at the group meetings we had on Thursday mornings (that was our Sabbath day), I would make sure there was an empty seat next to me in case he might just happen to sit there. He never did, though.

February 1974. After we came back to Texas.

That summer Larry went to Turkey with a group of guys my dad hand-picked to join him on a mission to discover Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat. They had been gone for a few weeks when Jean Ann and I got a postcard from Larry. We thought that was so neat! So, when he asked me to take a walk on the mountain in Mexico, I was on cloud nine! He didn't really say much, but he did put his arm around my shoulders. I thought this was so cool—the closest thing to a date I'd ever had!

I was also pretty excited about this new adventure of being a missionary in Mexico. Since Wayne and Linda were there, I didn't feel friendless. Being so far away from my family would be difficult, of course, and I had no idea how long I would be here. But still I loved the adventure of it all. Plus I had already had a couple of chances to use some of my Spanish skills and I was sure that would get better. Of course, I had no idea what was about to happen next.

It was Dec. 31, 1973. Thursday morning was here and it was time for our church meeting. We were all sitting in the large front room and my dad was standing in the middle of the room ready to give the sermon. These meetings tended to last for 2 to 3 hours. We all had our bibles and our pens to mark certain verses. I had on my new purple jumper that mom had made for me before we came. And...Larry decided to sit next to me! How cool was that? As my dad continued to speak Larry and I shared a pen and I thought that was just the neatest thing.

Next thing I knew, Tom, (my dad) was saying that it was now the time to join two people together. I had seen this sort of thing before at the mission in Texas. One couple was "joined together" in marriage in the middle of the road! But he asked for Larry to read a certain bible passage and then he asked me to read another passage. I was slowly figuring out that it looked like he was joining Larry and me together. What? I couldn't think. What was happening? I didn't dare look at Larry. I kept my head down. What did this mean?

The next thing I knew was he was saying that I was no longer his daughter and would now be known as Larry's wife. I was shocked to say the least. But then, I really trusted my dad. I mean, if that's what I was supposed to do, well then I would. And this would also mean that I wouldn't be considered a child any longer; I would now be an adult. What could be bad about that? Plus, my dad must think that Larry is the best person for me so I'm sure he is. And he put his arm around me the other day and he sat by me today, so then it just makes sense. So, I guess now we are married.

I'm Doing What?!?

After the meeting was over, I was then told that we were going on a honeymoon to Horsetails Falls and my mom and dad were going with us. Okay, that could be fun. At least I wouldn't be totally on my own. Then my mom took me out for a walk to talk. She told me what happens on your wedding night. I was not impressed with the explanation and told her that I certainly wasn't going to do that! She was a bit surprised by my response and visibly thrown off but said hesitantly, "well, I think you'll like it."

This was in February of 1974 after we had returned to Texas.

I didn't know anything about sex. I was still very innocent and naive. I was not enthusiastic at all about the duties of a wife on your wedding night and I knew she was wrong about me liking it. (I eventually discovered that she was right...) After that we got ready and the four of us went to Horsetail Falls for 1 night. I can't say I remember too much about it really. I was pretty overwhelmed by all the new stuff that was happening, but I had learned a long time ago not to show my emotions and kept my fears and thoughts to myself. I pretended that I could handle this and seemed on the outside to be pretty happy. Anyway, I was an adult now, and I was determined to prove how mature I was.

When we got back to Santa Tierra (Holy Ground in Spanish), I found out the second-story room that was being built was in fact for Larry and me. So, it seems that a lot of people knew about this marriage before I did. Well, I was a missionary now and I had a husband. Everything was going to be just fine. It was much longer before everyone left to go back to Texas. The only people that stayed behind were Wayne, Linda, and their 2 children; Alfred and Margaret and their children; and Larry and me.

Final Thoughts

As I think about my own daughters and granddaughters, I can't really imagine how my parents could have been behind all of this. I heard years later from other people that my dad was uneasy because I had started questioning things and he was anxious that I might decide to leave. He wasn't really concerned about me but his worry was how it would look for his reputation if his daughter left the mission. His solution to that was to get me married and then I would be someone else's problem. It just seemed to work out that Larry had gone to them to ask about getting married, and I think he thought that I would be a good wife because I was Tom's daughter. Since my dad knew that I had a little school girl crush on Larry, he assumed I would be okay with all this. But, at no time did mom or dad ever talk to me about it before it happened. I felt that I had no say in the matter at all. It was God's will. We referred to my dad as "the Lord"—and if the Lord said it, it must be so.

I have always regretted missing out on my teen years. I'm so angry that I lost that precious time in my life and can never get it back. I console myself knowing that I have made the best of it. And I have 4 very lovely children and 6 grandchildren. I also firmly believe that everything that happens to us in life is part of what makes us who we are. When you go through things like this, you gain empathy toward people even if you don't know their whole story.

The whole ordeal of being so young and naive and then being sent to another country and married to a man I really knew very little about—a man who was twice my age—was a lot to handle. I think it would be for anyone! I was taken away from school, and everything I was familiar with. On top of that, my own family totally disowned me. It was like I did something wrong, but I didn't. None of this was my doing. My little sister Nancy didn't even realize she had a sister for so many years—she is 10 years younger than me and was only 6 at the time. It was ruthless and cruel.

You may find this hard to believe, but I have forgiven my parents for this—and Larry, too. No need to hang on to that kind of anger. Would only hurt me more. But the most devastating thing that came out of it was that our family was forever fractured... and remains so to a certain extent even today. I was so unprepared to have a family and made numerous bad decisions, and this has also led to my own family (my children and me) being fractured as well. I work daily to repair this and I feel as close as I can to them. My children and grandchildren are so amazing and I love them all dearly, but it takes a lot of time to repair this kind of heartache. This is something I will go into more detail in another post.

Keywords: Arranged marriage, Holy Ground Mission, Cult Life