SickandTired,
I was an active baptized JW for 29 years, an elder's wife for 25 of them---a 100% believing, much-beloved, extremely "prominent," highly-regarded company man, valued and used extensively both locally and by HQ---up until 2001 when, after years of wrestling with myself and God, I gave in to the monumentally difficult but conscientious conclusion that had haunted me for years: that I could not and would no longer promote the faith to others nor remain connected with it myself. I didn't disassociate, I didn't fade, I simply ceased all of it all at once---attending any weekly meetings, engaging in field service, attending assemblies, conventions and, most significantly, the Memorial. Though it hasn't been easy, especially in the early years following my decision, my husband and I have remained married. While he has continued active with the JWs, he was immediately deleted as an elder for not "presiding over his household in a fine manner." Not surprisingly, I was the "household" over which he was not presiding properly. Since my exit in 2001 I've only set foot in a Kingdom Hall on 3 occasions---all funeral/memorial services. I have no association with JWs whatsoever any longer, with the exception of the rare occasion of my husband's and my invitation to one of his family's "gatherings."
In the last several years since my departure my husband has been solicited repeatedly to "serve" again as an elder, however, he himself now has too many of his own misgivings and doubts regarding the organization to conscientiously teach and enforce the many of its doctrines and dogma in which he no longer believes himself. How ironic that his being removed as an elder after having served faithfully and conscientiously as either the congregation servant or presiding overseer since he was 20 years old was the very event that for the first time ever afforded him the reprieve from the whirlwind of responsibilities he needed to pause and truly consider all that he'd unquestioningly accepted as "truth" for so many years.
Once he did, he began to recognize that much of his devotion was really just to rote habit and routine, duty and administration; that much of what he accepted on faith was, upon contemplation, unchallenged WT puffery. Much to my delight---and because he never, ever craved, sought or defined himself by his innumerable WT "privilileges of service"--- he took to his new stress-free life and freed-up schedule like a paroled prisoner. Never in his adult life had he such possession of his own life and schedule. He's even acknowledged that once you either step off or are pushed off the treadmill of JW's exhausting busy-ness, it's like a fog you never knew existed miraculously lifting from your thinking. Though his pride impels him to offer some token defense of certain aspects of JW indoctrination to cover for his own continued involvement, he never does so with anything remotely approaching real conviction and even sometimes permits himself to join me in chuckling at the absurdities.
His maintaining active status with the Witnesses over the past decade appears to be driven mainly by two difficult realities: 1) the investment with them of all but the first 13 years of his nearly 6 decades of life--- doggedly in the face of what he himself now readily concedes is its abysmal record of self-congratulatory claims, blasphemously-arrogated authority, and notoriously-failed prophecies---repeatedly, over many decades; and 2) the fact that his few remaining family are still, nominally at least, believing members. Obviously neither reason is based in his confidence in the organization or his faith in its teachings, a gradual development that would at one time have been unfathomable for this once-lockstep adherent.
All this is to say that there is nothing you are feeling or experiencing with which I cannot completely empathize. Unlike you, however, the worst of it for me was having absolutely no one in whom to confide or from whom to seek counsel as my most persistent, agonizing doubts and reservations finally broke through my mental blockades in the mid-90s--- during what was the embryonic stage of the internet and well before the emergence of the Web. I speak from tragic personal experience when I warn you that that kind of emotional and psychic suppression and isolation are a ticking time-bomb that eventually, but most assuredly, detonates, often causing lasting, irreparable damage to your physical health. I do not recommend it. I wish to leave you and other "sisters" in your quandary who may be reading this a word of advice: If you become convinced that the religion of the WT is not the true worship it is advertised to be, you must not delay planning and executing your exit. The younger you and your children are when you make the break, the greater the odds of your achieving the happy, successful life you and they desire and deserve. The persistent regret I have is that even after I strongly doubted the religion to be "the truth," I remained another 10 years trying to re-dedicate myself to it, fervently praying for something in me or it to change. By the time I could no longer endure the agony (and had started to suffer some alarming health symptoms), I had squandered a valuable window needed to reprogram my young child, had unprofitably delayed academic and professional pursuits, and had neglected nurturing critical relationships and laying foundations for our post-JW life. I cannot urge you strongly enough to learn from my experience.
Best of luck to you and others in similar predicament. Of course, if you make smart decisions, you won't need to rely on luck. AMNESIAN
