Well I finally decided to post. I have been looking at this site for many years(4 or 5 I guess) but never really felt the need to post until now.To give a little background I was raised in a strict JW family. My Dad was an elder for most of my childhood, PO for most of it) thankfully he fell away when I was 15 or 16. So there was no pressure from him to get baptised. But being a good little JW I still attended the meetings with other family members, where there was major pressure to get baptised, but I'm proud to say they did not succeed. I guess the teachings about not giving in to peer pressure really came in handy. So anyway now at 46 years of age I have not been to any meetings for many many years. I still have friendships with about 7 or so people that I grew up with in the hall and proud to say they no longer attend. A tight bunch of friends we have. So I guess the reason I have never felt the need to post on here was ,how could I ever relate to those who had such horrible experiences on leaving this cult.
I mean here I am a guy that still gets to talk to his family and still maintains strong freindships with old friends from the hall. What advice could I have to offer to anyone. You could say I made a clean break, or so I thought. That brings me to the point of this post. I get home and open my email and lo and behold its from an old friend from my old hall and this is what he has to say:
How's it going? I left xxxx a message yesterday. I was thinking about you guys. We had our District Convention this past weekend and it made me think about you guys. I can't remember if it was a year ago since we talked? I got reinstated again in January. I give my first talked in two weeks. Do you ever think about the truth? Things are getting pretty bad. The end is getting close.
So dust off that bible and come to a meeting. I know its pretty funny hearing this from me and I have felt pretty lame in the past trying to talk to people who knew the old me. Well I know you and XXXXX saw alot of fishy stuff back in the day at the old XXXXX hall. That might be the case but just because of a few idiots(XXXXXX for example) doesn't mean the whole organization is bad. Think about XXXXX. I still think about you guys and care.
So this is a guy that has been DF'd three times ,slept with countless women and partied his whole life, married and divorced, got engaged to one woman while DF'd and went to the meetings with said fiancee who got baptised and on the verge of his getting reinstated a second time cheated on her and confessed before the announcement was made. Hence he was not let back in and dumped her.
I"m sorry this is so long but it got me fired up. So I not sure how to respond or even if I should. I would love to blast back with all the stuff I have learned on here but it would get back to my family and I might get the cold shoulder from them. I guess I just needed to vent.
