Lisa, you said:
"Anyhow, my point was, I do believe that their shunning is done so that all of us will 'come back'. Once they see it isn't working, they are faced with a life without their children.
This is more difficult for parents than the Society would have us believe. Can YOU imagine not having any contact with your daughter?"
Lisa, I hope I didn't seem abrubt when I said the difference between us and them is they are cult members and we aren't. It is just that in my daughter's case at least, I don't think it was done so I would "come back." She had been culling non-Witness friends and relatives for a couple of years and had already been putting us at arms length as far as interacting with us. I think she saw cutting us off as a sacrifice she could make to Jehovah. We are the sacrificial lambs that prove her devotion to "Jehovah's Visible Organization" and her love for "Theocracy" as expressed in the rules laid down by the "Faithful and Discreet Slave." In a nutshell, they think they are selling us for paradise. I don't think it is nearly as difficult for them as it should be, or as it is for us normal people to lose them. They see themselves as "Putting Jehovah First." We see it as losing a child or parents whom we love with all our hearts and want to keep in our lives all of our lives. We don't understand how people we love so much, can reject us so completely over nearly nothing, but they are really using us as downpayments on Paradise Earth. It sickens me. I think you are missing just how cold they have been conditioned to become in situations where they are taught it is "either Jehovah, or....(insert your name here.)"
I don't have to imagine not having contact with my daughter, I don't have to because I can remember it and still experience it. She lives an hour from me and I haven't been to her home in two years, since she started shunning us. The night she started shunning me she returned the keys to the car she had been borrowing for a year in the note that stated she was "adjusting our relationship." I still hadn't paid for the $600 dollar dryer I had just given her for a housewarming present. It was the night before we were having a get toghether with her brother who had just flown in from New England. He told me he was glad he was here, as he wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't been here and experienced it. My wife was shattered. I think seeing how it has hurt my wife has given me the balm of anger. Anyway, don't count on any change "Once they see it isn't working." That would indicate they might have been WRONG and they can never, ever admit that. I have to say that while my wife would forgive my daughter in a heartbeat, and I would try to, I don't think I can ever feel the same as I did. There are some relationships in life you should be able to count on, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers and sisters. With Jehovah's Witnesses, it just ain't so. Having called her when her mom was in agony, crying and asking for her daughter to come and having my child say she already had plans, well, it brings it all home to me. The Jehovah's Witnesses define the cult experience in my eyes. Don't put normal love where it has been burned out and replaced with greed for eternal life. If you do you will be sadly disappointed. Best to avoid putting your parents to that choice, best to do as Spider, and the others do here and allow for their being in the Cult. They tell me crack head mothers will sell their children to satisfy their needs, I guess a lot of Witnesses are in the same boat.
