Something I have not heard before on this board is waiting in the car out in service or any of the woman who were elders wives waiting on their husbands while in an elders meeting.
I was 24 years old when I got married to an older man he was 41 and had been an elder for about 12 years. I truly loved my husband when we got married. I did not marry him because he was an elder, I married him because I loved him. I have been accused of marrying him for his being an elder by older sisters. My husband had no money when we got married, hardly worked and pioneered. I truly loved him like crazy. I thought at the age of 24 I knew everything. The system was going to end before my husband got to much older and we would live forever in love. I thought we could live on love. When that did not work, I worked and he still hardly worked and I supported us and all the other pioneers who could not work because of PMS. That was a fun time in my life.
I came from a very abusive family and was raised around the "truth."
Well before my husband married me he was asked by a CO to move to this hall in the country that needed help. He was the only elder for about the first three years of our marriage. I had no idea what being an elders wife was like. I saw the elders wives I grew up with and they all got rides home from the meetings when there were long elders meetings. That did not happen for me. Being my husband was the only elder, I was expected to just wait for him, and being we lived half an hour from the hall plus had little money it was not like I could just drive home and come back to pick him up so I waited for him in the car as the hall was so small I could hear what was being said in the back room. I waited and waited and waited.
Then there was field service. It was all in the country. Driving and driving. Our territory covered 70 miles one way and 50 the other way. There were times I would sit in the car for hours when someone got a good call and they just had to stay because we had come so far and this person just had to know the "truth."
Even in the city, waiting for someone on a good call. I just hate sitting. I am a very active person who likes to walk and be productive. To just sit and sit and sit while you are waiting drives me crazy. My husband said it was good for me as it built character in me. It was good for me to sit and wait. I felt like I would go crazy sometimes.
The worst was when there would be four of us in the car and I was locked in the car with a JW who had mental problems. OH MY GOD this one brother heard voices in his head (probably many others did too but I just did not know it). My husband left me in the car with with the voices in the head brother for half an hour while he was on this great call a little over a year ago. If I had, had a gun I would have blown my brains out. How do you talk to someone who is hearing voices when you are not trained in mental health. If I said something that got this brother upset he would really start to freak out.
So many days I would go home from service or the meetings and just wish I was dead. I hated life.
So did many of you go through the same thing or was I just the only one who had this happen to me.
Life really is to short to spend locked in the box of a car.