I don’t post too often but I’m always lurking from my workplace. But now I feel the need to ask for any advise from you guys.
A while back, when I decided I had enough of the WT internal politics and the ‘wait on Jah’ attitude, I faded away from the Hall and basically disappeared into the night. I had a close group of friends that where almost happy to turn their backs on me when one by one they noticed my lack of ‘spirituality’. All but one.
This friend kept calling me, harassing me and encouraging me to come back to Jah, against the advice of all others. While others were ‘happy’ to see me every time I somehow stumbled upon them in the market or at the mall, this girl went the extra mile to truly help my wicked self.
One day I decided to drop the bomb on her and basically told her how I truly felt about it all. I can still hear that ‘Oh my god!’ reverberating on the speakerphone at my desk. To my surprise, although she was scared to the bone at the beginning, she kept hearing all the WT facts I had to share and never rejected me and stood her ground against my points of view with a respect atypical of JWs.
To make this story short, she is mentally out of the org. and now has jumped the fence all JWs fear the most. She only remains inside looking for an opportunity to breakout of the org without hurting her relatives too much. Now, when I hear her speak of the WT, even I get the goosebumps. It is like night and day. She went thru Franz’s CoC in a flash, even calling me at work with outbursts of pure rage after reading of Malawi and Mexico, etc. etc. She has grown not only intellectually and emotionally but IMHO even professionally.
I felt like a proud father. She is free to decide.
But death was a subject she will most happily avoid. She never could get a grasp on the repercussions of a purely materialistic approach to existence.
Well, fast forward to today. My friend, who remains inside because of her immediate family, is losing that special someone she loves the most. As days pass by and the news get grimmer and grimmer I am feeling less and less proud of myself.
Back in the day she might have that transparent look, that blank stare that too much WT/Religion Koolaid in the bloodstream will cause. I can almost hear her say: ‘Oh well, inherited sin…"
Not anymore. I killed this girl’s faith. I personally smashed it. Shredded it to tiny pieces and burned them. She is a now wreck.
As she is on the phone and breaksdown as the bad news that pour down from almost all directions, she backs me into a corner I never figured to be at.
In this situation, What do you say to someone you had personally made aware that there might not be an afterlife after all? What words will soothe a full frontal confrontation with mortality? I even tried to pull that ‘Well, you never know’ card. A rather sad attempt for succor.
When the cute elders go to reassure her family with the joyful and great resurrection hope, it has the complete opposite effect on her. She sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss of facing death. I am not an emotional person, but to hear her speak when she describes the conversations, makes me tremble of pure guilt. When she points out the ‘love’ the brothers are ‘showing’ and the disappearing act of family friends I know she will see this from a completely different perspective if it wasn’t for me.
To say I am second guessing myself will be a gross understatement.
Was all this worth it? What did I left her with, besides regrets for a life ‘wasted’ pursuing a dream? What besides a hole in her roof that will just let the storm in every time it pours?
Although I made her strong in many respects in her life, I now feel I left her susceptible to the big equalizer itself.
A thread a while ago addressed the benefits of religion in dealing with these situations.
My friend is a fellow member and she will be referred to this thread to read your words. I spent all my ‘wisdom’ already.
Please help me find the words she needs to hear on these difficult times.