I joined this forum on 1May2007 with a promise that I would tell more about myself as time went on. Well, here goes.
I was born and raised in the Black Belt of Alabama in Wilcox County. It is supposedly called the Black Belt due to the color of the soil, but I have a strong suspicion it is also due to the fact that there is such a heavy concentration of Black people in the dozen or more counties that make up the Black Belt.
My parents were sharecroppers which was simply a form of whitewashed slavery. We were very, very materially poor. One of my earliest memories is getting up with my daddy to share a cup of coffee. He taught me how to read from the Maxwell House coffee can. He had me read the words GOOD TO THE LAST DROP to him each morning. Before long, I was reading any and everything. Mind you, this was when I was about 3 years of age.
There were thirteen (13!) of us children. I was number 12; number 13 died in infancy. My dad was a brilliant, well-read man, but a stone alcoholic. He loved the Bible and would read it to us and tell us such wonderful stories when he was sober. But, when he was drunk, he was an entirely different person. He and my mother would fight like cats and dogs.
All of us kids were gifted academically, and when I was five, a kind and loving teacher sneaked me into school. There was no kindergarten for Black kids, so she carefully instructed me to tell everyone I was six years of age. It was about the hardest thing I ever did. To this day, I hate deceit of any kind - even if it's for a noble purpose.
When I turned 16, I went away for the summer to New York and Philadelphia. When I returned, the whole community was abuzz. What was all the excitement about? Jehovah's Witnesses had moved into our little hamlet and set up a Kingdom Hall on one of the main highways. They had made visits on everyone but us. Why did they miss us? Because we lived so far back into the sticks, that no one but the people who were born and raised there knew how to find us. My grandmother refused to get our house wired for electricity so we were completely cut off from the outside.
As I said, everyone was talking about how the Witnesses knew the Bible and how they were teaching that the end was coming in a few short years. One girl at school tried to show me how they arrived at 1914 as the beginning of the time of the end. I was quite naturally intrigued. One of my older sisters who lived closer to town had obtained a copy of the blue Truth book. I read it all the way through on the long bus ride to school one morning. I made up my mind then and there that I wanted to become a Witness and help spread the good news.
To cut this short some, I was baptized in 1974. I was fired up with a biblical zeal to reach as many as possible. I contacted every relative I knew, badgered my neighbors, elected officials, whoever. They must have wanted to slap me out of their faces many a time. The funny thing is, I never believed a word about 1975. I remembered from reading the Bible at home and at church that Jesus said no one could get the knowledge of the times and seasons that were in the Father's jurisdiction.
My first serious surge of doubt about the Organization was in 1978 when they reversed themselves on the prohibition of certain marital intimacies. I remember reading the Org's assurance that if anyone had obtained a divorce due to their earlier understanding, that person was absolved of any wrongdoing in the matter. I thought, how can any person or any organization grant such assurance? Isn't that a mediator's prerogative? But, zealous little JW that I was, I simply pushed my doubts aside.
Then around the 1980's the doubts and misgivings returned with a vengeance. Why were there so many articles about the FDS and how we should be loyally submitting to its direction? Why was Ray Franz disfellowshipped and why was everybody so hush-hush about it? I read the article about him in Time magazine and thought that he must have done more than simply eat a meal with a DA'd person.
The doubts wouldn't go away; no one was answering my questions, so in 1988 I walked away from the JW's. I continued to get all the magazines, new releases, etc., from someone who remained in, however. So at heart I still thought of myself as a JW; even after getting married again and having another child. I taught that child all about the Bible but from a JW slant. I returned to the Witnesses in 1998 hoping things had improved, but it seemed they were worse than ever. I tell you, if I heard Faithful and Discreet Slave one time I heard it a thousand times. I would sit there and bite my lip to keep from screaming! Never any mention made of Jesus and the deep love He showed for all of us. Never any encouragement to pick up the Bible and read it for itself. It was all about our Bible-based publications.
One day during a slow period at work I googled CULTS. I think everybody knows where I'm going with this. I followed a link to the Freeminds site and from there to here. It was scary at first, but at the same time liberating. Now I understood why I had been plagued by such recurrent doubts. This was not the Truth and had never been the Truth. I stopped going to any meetings in 2005; I've had only 3 visits from the elders; I have not DA'd or been DF'd. My youngest child is still in. She graduated from HS this year, wanted to pioneer, but I insisted she go to college first. We'll see from there.
So, fellow JWDers, that is the gist of my involvement with the JW's. The WTS had us all fooled for a brief moment, but the gig is up. There is no way they can survive the onslaught of the Internet. The truth about the so-called Truth is but a mouse click away. Thank you all for your support and kindness.
Snowbird