Yes, a few times I could have, twice if I'd been honest with myself, and once if I had just been brave.
I was a pretty bad teenager as far as promiscuity and sneaking around etc, and I lied like a rug to get out of it many times. If I'd just been honest with them, and myself, I'd have had hard times as a teen and then left to live a life for myself. Again, same scenario when I was DF'd at 25. I went back because I thought I had to, to save my two young children. My parents also said they'd only help me if I did, and I was a single mom that was only 25! I wasn't honest with them or myself, kept living my wordly life and went to be reinstated. I was still sleeping with a boyfriend, smoking and drinking at clubs when I was reinstated. I knew then the holy spirit was a figment of their imagination, but still I did what was expected.
Neither of those examples bother me as much as the scene that replays in my mind over and over. I was trying to be as zealous and as capable as all the other pioneers in the congregation, I was about 14. In service a couple listened to my presentation patiently, but I could tell they were just waiting for a break in the flow to lay an objection on me, so I just spoke in a grand stream of words, lol, and it wasn't until the end that I have them lay on me what it was they wanted to say.
The told me that the organization I was in was formed by people that were of other religions, and they smoked and drank and had power trips, and the set dates that came and went and were false prophets. They said that 1975, when I was just a toddler probably (they were right) that they misled many to give up their wealth, their hopes, their homes, their futures, and it was wicked and horrible. That I serve men, not God, and that I should look it up myself, that the proof is all right in our own books and history, not with apostates.
Instead I went back to the cargroup and mocked them and their dilusion, and talked about how misled THEY are...the older ones in the car tried to quickly change the subject, or steer it differently, and I recall feeling something come over me...kind of an internal "Hey, they were WRONG...weren't they? Why are you acting like that? What am I missing?" Then I squashed it down by telling myself Satan was just getting to me, and I needed to not listen or look into it, and just go on my way. I was 14. I can't be held accountable for that, nor for being baptized later that year. It's all so pathetic.