I lost my password in the move and since my old e-mail is dead, I have ot use this screenname. If a mod reads this please PM me to let me know what to do. I had this problem about a year ago and it was never resolved.
Thanks! Wanderlustguy aka WLG aka Donnie
I think the biggest thing that has changed for me is not thinking I'm going to be dead and gone or in a new world in a few years. Reality is, we're gonna get old, and no one else is going to make that time any easier for us, so we have to do it for ourselves. We can't live like this is temporary because no one knows what if anything else there will be. A smart guy once said the hardest thing to comprehend for a person is that one day they won't be alive.
Once that is understood, though, it's very liberating. We were always taught that people who don't go to meetings and aren't actively handing out Watchtowers and conducting studies don't love Jehovah and are captivated by a world of sin and depravity.
I'd say the opposite is true form what I have seen. Yea, some go off the deep end, that's for sure, but there is a reason and it's not because that's what they want. The adjustment is huge to go from this (seemingly) warm and secure environment to a world where you are on your own and ill equipped to live in it. We don't even know how to plan for retirement!
A different smart guy through various statements got a point across to me, which I still struggle with, "If you are fully present in your present, it is more than enough". Basically spending less time on the past and only a little time on the future, and makinga n effort to be aware of now.
Right now I'm not in a great place in some ways, but in others, I'm better than ever. I know better what I want and how far I'm willing to go to get it.
I spent 2 years researching what I beleived. At one point I asked a friend of mine, a former Bethelite and probably the smarted guy I've ever met, what the real deal is. He told me he couldn't tell me but could only point me in the direction of the facts and I would either beleive it or not, and based on that response I would either get to a point and get stuck there, or move on to a life of constant amazement, growth and peace. Because the Truth about it all is all at once simple and complex but if we can stop thinking the way we were PROGRAMMED to, the curtain falls away and you see the reality of it all and once that happens and you get it, you spend days just laughing at the simplicity and absudity of it all.
We spend (we being humanity) so much time concerned about what God wants and the "Rules" that we end up insulting Him by neglecting the gifts we were given. We spend hours looking at printed words about what He wants from us and then walk outside and squash a living creature that has no reason to be there because it's a bug. We don't even notice the birds and sky anymore because we're thinking about what we did wrong to deseve the troubles we may have, or how we aren't good enough.
I'm not saying I know everything, but I am saying no one else does. God put so much in front of our faces, every time you ask to hear from him and walk outside...you get an answer. In my opinion the difference will be in whether or not we are prepared to hear it. Once you do...the world has a lot more color in it.