When that happened my life just got worse I cried myself to sleep nightly.
I'm sorry that this happened. We all want to live to the moral standards that we set out for ourselves. I feel your pain in that it heart your heart when you didn't or couldn't live up to those standards...
It had nothing to do with being cut off from the congregation or family because half my family still associated with me. My feeling terrible and lost was because I had lost my relationship with God.
I can totally understand this... You look at it a lot like I do. If I do something wrong, it's about me feeling like I did something wrong towards God... If anything, I'd feel bad that my family got hurt by what I did, but if I felt like I lost my relationship with God, that would be the worst feeling ever...
For a while I tried to make myself feel better by making myself believe that I didn't have to be a JW. I never bashed JW's I just made myself content with not going to the meetings.
That's a difficult thing, to try and make yourself feel better when you don't even believe what your trying to convince yourself of...
I was disfellowshipped for 10 years and I thank God that soon I came across a WT magazine and the minute I read it I couldn't deny it any longer. I resumed going to the meetings and then Hurricane Katrina happened. I prayed fervently to Jehovah to keep me, my husband and our 3 kids (7,6,4) safe. After the storm we were able to pull ourselves together buy our home and get settled in a new state. I continued to pray to Jehovah for help and guidance and sure 'nuff one of the Witnesses knocked on my door. From there it's history, I have been reinstated and I feel so alive, invigorating, and refreshed. I feel closer to God than I have ever felt.
I'm glad you found peace and happiness...
What I think happens to most of us when we leave the truth is we don't examine ourselves before making decisions. We get to the point that we want to blame everything and everyone else for what we have gone through instead of looking at what we have done wrong to cause it. Those of us who were disfellowshipped; all the while it was happening to others, we had no problems with it. BUT when it happened to us we just can't understand why they had to disfellowship us. So we start blaming the brothers, the congregation, the religion for something we basically brought on ourselves. We must remember that it is Jehovah whom we are striving to please not man and Jehovah can read our hearts so there's no reason for us not to be true with ourselves because what it all boils down to is our being judged based on our doing not anyone elses.
This is not true at all. I examined the scriptures and had major problems with the teachings... I was a pioneer when I came to this conclusion. It was and has been difficult to come to this conclusion... I examined a lot of different bible commentaries, I looked into the original greek language. I used www.htmlbible.com a lot when I did my research. I used Strongs dictionary on that website, something the society uses... I didn't use "apostate" websites in my research...
Things really hurt my heart when I found out certain things. There was a lot of things that I found out, and I didn't use any "apostate" literature with my research... for instance, they told people not to have Organ transplants because it was considered cannibolism. I think that was in 67 or 68. Then in I think 1980 that they could now have organ transplants. Never any sort of apology for all the people that died because of this teaching... That was 1 of many, many things that I found out within my research... It's heart-wrenching to find these things out when I was so dedicated to the society's teachings...
It wasn't that I or many people here were d'f and want to blame someone. This is painful for many of us... Do you know how much I cried when I and many people here found these things out??? We come here because we had our hearts torn out because of the pain of finding these things out... Some were Elders, Bethelites, Pioneers, etc when they found out these things. Do you realize how many families have been torn apart because we found out things that were not right and our hearts couldn't go along with it??? It's been the most painful experience of my life. I didn't want to find these things out. I loved JWs. My heart was within the cong. I used to actually cry when people didn't respond at the doors because I felt satan blinded there eyes...
Finding these things out just broke my heart... I may very well lose my husband and entire family because my heart can't go along with some of the things they do. Do you have any idea how difficult that is???
We come here for support. We come here to cry with one another, we come here to laugh with eachother. We come here to pour out our hearts so we can deal with the pain. Some of us are mad, because we got hurt and the pain is unbearable... We listen and help eachother.
Again I pray that you all search your hearts and pray to God that he allow his holy spirit to guide you to the right path/course
Thanks for praying for us. I will pray also...