Ok, so we covered leaving, regaining my faith, now for some recent events.
From disabled housing, where I met my fiancée working as a PCA Together we weathered the death of my non-witness father, the Y2K scare, 9-11, and more all the time doing our best to improve as people and serve wherever we could.
She got through college and got her bachelor’s degree and a job as a contract-worker at 3M; I struggled in physical therapy to relearn how to walk. We worked on our credit and kept swapping up to better vehicles and living situations and I started a business building top-end custom PC’s.
I don’t want to brag about our place, but we love it and some set-up is in order.
We live on the side of a bluff along the Mississippi River relatively near downtown St Paul and have a big enough house that we take in ‘strays.’
Strays are people who I know well enough that I feel it’s safe to give them shelter and who also exhibit some degree of potential but are down on their luck.
Just a boost back on their feet, as it were.
Well, we let my first ex wife stay in one of the rooms in the basement and she agreed to paint the place.
So I’m here yakking away on my PC and I see a strange vehicle coming up our drive…
Who can it be? Anyone care to take a guess?
I’m thinking it could be girl scouts trying to once again exploit my weakness for thin mints, or it could be yet another political candidate wanting to pump my hand for my vote and some money…
I pick up the cel and give my ex a call as she’s out on my parking pad and ask if she saw a strange car.
“I’m talking to them right now, I’ll bring them in” click.
YIKES! So I quickly pull down my shirt to better conceal the butt of my Beretta M96 and start tidying my ponytail. No sense spooking the herd.
So in walk Jehovah’s witnesses. yay.
I recognize sister M as one I had always referred to as ‘that M woman’ but I didn’t know her partner. We exchanged droll superficial pleasantries but I could feel that this woman despised me.
They departed as if someone had set fire to their tails, and I reached down to pat my sidearm but it was still covered. Whatever could have freaked them out so?
My ex comes back in and said, “they’ll be back next week to study, but don’t want to enter your house.”
That didn’t really bother me much, but I asked why and she reached behind me to pick up a book I had inadvertently left out on my PC worktable…
Crisis Of Conscience.
I could have been waving my pistol around and it would hardly have been a bigger threat than that one book on my table (not that I would do that, I am a responsible and law abiding carry permit holder)
My ex quoted them as saying “you have to understand, that is not just a ‘bad book’ it’s SATANIC!”
The very next week they came out again but only deigned to sit out in my screen porch sneering at my Fourth of July decorations. They brought out one of their elders, a heavy-hitter named Don something-or-other to grill my ex all about little old me!
Who are my family? Where do they go? When was I baptized and where?
Can anyone say ‘blessing in disguise?’
They were pretty disgusted to find they had neglected to dunk me so they could call me up before a committee!
All the time I had been in their territory they had never so much as ONCE showed up to see how I was doing or try to win me back to what they think is salvation, but just a week after seeing Ray Franz’s wonderful book in my home they were ready to call me up before a secret star chamber committee of fools and ensure good and proper that none of my family could speak to me again!
Remember that I neither had nor desired contact with these people and posed no threat to their little congregation; yet they were going to railroad me through the kangaroo court to the ol’ lynching tree, how precious!
They decided to have my ex study in the kingdumb hall.
Hey, I live to serve, so I offered to drive her. She said she didn’t want to tie up an hour of my day but I assured her “no worries, I can just sit in my van in the lot and read something, I’m sure I can scare up something good to read…….”
Heheheheheh, somehow my services were never required!
I bet they have lost more people to Ray Franz’s books than to oral sex.
My ex, her hubby, and their son eventually moved out but I bet I don’t get any witnesses at my door any time soon.
I should photocopy that book cover and let all my friends post it on their doors, it’s like a magic talisman. The JW’s can’t make the sign of the cross to ward off evil, but I can picture them making a little W with both thumbs and index fingers and hissing at the sight of that book!
They are so fond of saying that DF’ing and shunning are part of their loving arrangements, but my little tale reveals that to be Orwellian doublespeak.
They told me ex they were afraid I was ‘demonized.’
To ‘demonize’ someone is to unfairly characterize them as evil.
That describes their actions so I guess they were finally right about something.
Go figure.
Roller