My last meeting was the day they had decided to reinstate me. Suckers.
YOUR LAST MEETING.........................
by vitty 87 Replies latest jw friends
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anewme
At my last meeting I had handed in a letter of sincere apology to the Congregation. I felt I needed to as advised by many spiritual people I have met (of differing beliefs, but who agree on a few things....restitution and repentance being two of them.) I felt I needed to acknowlege my sins and to apologize in order to move on.
But as I sat there I felt myself falling deeper and deeper into an old abyss of mind control. The familiar phrases fell perfectly into old scarred grooves in my brain. I felt a pall, a dark cloud descend upon me. I tried to shake the uncomfortable feeling of having made a mistake by coming.
Then during the droning discourse my eyes fell upon a family, the family of the man who was up on the podium. The wife looked dreadful, exhausted and hopeless. The two teenage sons looked like their minds were far away and plotting something very untheocratic. I thought about their family life. I knew with certainty about their lives. I had seen the wife working at the local Home Depot wearing a dirty orange apron. I felt sorry for her thinking how she must be almost my age and feeling the old hormones sputtering out and how tired and bored she must be and how resentful she must feel that she must work at a low pay job and share her elder husband's time with a congregation for free. I imagined how her sons must complain at home about this or that about their lives.
What really hit me was the hollow lonely and mutinous look in the eyes of the teens at the hall. What were we doing to these precious lives? I was contributing to it all by my presence. I was showing approval for their neglect by my being there. I knew what their futures would be....just like mine was...penniless slavedom.
That was my last meeting. You get to a point when you have had enough. When your inner self says "NO MORE!"
And you know in your heart you will never go back. -
IronClaw
I can't exactly remember my last meeting, but I know it wasn't to soon after I read "Crisis of Conscience" in 2 days. I remember being blown away by what I was reading. Proceeded to engulf "In Search of Christian Freedom". Haven't been to meeting since. Just recently got myself DA'd by telling off 2 elders at a gas station. OH WELL.
Thank you Ray Franz. I am eternally grateful.
The Claw.
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caligirl
I don't even remeber it. I was such a sporadic attendee for so long, it really didn't make much of an impression. It was some time in late 1996 just after my oldest was born, and the next meeting somehow just never happened. Nothing memorable, no one ever really hassled me at all, and still haven't. It was a real non-event.
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Blueblades
Summer of 02.
Blueblades
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mama1119
Mine was Spring of last year. I turned in a letter to request reinstatement a few weeks before (it was my 12th request). They decised to meet with me and asked me AGAIN if I was sorry for what I had done. Well, I had just about had it with saying I was sorry for an incisent that happened two years before that resulted in my beautiful baby, so I said just that..."I really feel like I have said I am sorry enough and I wouldnt change a thing becuase of my baby" and then they said "at what cost" did I have her. And that was it for me, as there is no cost to large to pay for my girl, and the fact that they thought there was made me so angry I didnt go back...
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sandy
At my last meeting I was sitting there during the Sunday WT lesson feeling very uncomfortable because I'd recently been before the elders confessing all my sins. I felt dirty, weak, and totally uncomfortable arounf all the "friend" especially the elders. Ok, during the WT study a lady gave her comment/answer to one of the questions and said . . . blah blah blah . . . and so as J-dubs we'd never consider suicide . . . not sure of exact words or what the WT lesson was about. But right after this comment she looked over in my direction. I wanted to craw under my chair . . . I was so humiliated thinking that this lady knew about some of the things I said to the elders in my JC meeting. Her step-father was one of the elders on the committee. And I know for a fact he used to tell him wife, at the very least, what went on in those meetings he sat on. I never went back after that. I used to tell my family I'd go back, to a different congregation but I never did. Thank goodness!
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vitty
After reading all these replies, one thing is clear. Most ppl left not because of doctine, but because the way they were treated.
They are the most unloving and judgemental group of ppl ive ever met, this is how I KNOW its not the truth.
Thanks for all your interesting replies.
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Stealth453
My last meeting was in the basement of the po's house, with three men that were foaming at the mouth, trying to get rid of me before I could do anymore damage to the neat little financial empire they had created using the "truth" as a front.
Half way through the lynching, I stood up, told them all to take a flying f**k off a short pier, and left. My insistence on exposing them, ended with me receiving the coveted Apostate title several years later.
I never succeeded in exposing the scam, but of the 3 that "tried" me, two died from alchohol related illness, and the third is cancer ridden, and house-bound.
I guess nature pays back in it's own way.
S