Well the time finally came to give it to my parents regarding their behavior.
My parents have not been talking to me because I told them I have a relationship. I came out to them 10 years ago (I was raised a JW but faded after I moved away from home at 21). When I came out (more of a confirmation than a surprise), they had already come to terms with it. However, that didn’t stop them for believing I should remain single forever.
They have a nasty history of family shunning. They kicked my sister out at 17, stopped talking to her at least 2 other times for years at a time. This was the first time I experienced it.
So it’s been about 6 weeks and my dad finally called, shocking because he never calls me. We had a couple minutes of general chit chat and then he tells me they are not mad at me but very sad, including the normal bit about feeling they can’t compromise their principles. I decided this is the time to make it clear how they act toward my sister and I is unacceptable.
I told him I wonder where they learned this because no one they know in the congregation acts this way. I said your mother never did this to her daughter, who chose to have a different faith. (My grandmother brought my dad in the JW religion but my aunt never joined.) I leveraged an example of a sister in the congregation who, although they refer to her as a pillar of the congregation, always talked to her DF’d daughter and had a normal relationship with her. He couldn’t refute these examples, and so he went on saying this is also a matter of conscience.
I responded by saying your conscience is way to hyper sensitive. The apostle Paul had to chastise the early congregation against this exact type of behavior. This comes across as just trying to save yourself! Well accusing him of this seemed to pierce him like a sword; he stumbled for his next words about not trying to save himself and I jabbed a bit harder by saying yes you are. You believe that if you don’t stop talking to me Jehovah will be mad at you and destroy you at Armageddon. I actually think it hurt him enough to stop and think about his actions. Most parents operate with the thought they would do anything for their children, so accusing him of actually being selfish must have a shock. He said it would take some time to think about it all.
I do love my parents though and I want nothing more than for us to be a closer family, and it hurt me to have to turn the mirror on them, to force them to really look at what they are doing. So I ended on a positive note by saying that both my sister and I know they are getting older and we want to spend as much time as we can with them. There is no time to waste on this silliness and we will always be here for you. Ha, I thought one last jab to show we are above this type of behavior.
I think I accomplished some good things in the conversation; I immediately spun it around and made it about them. They have tried to lay the blame for their actions squarely on my sister and me. When the real truth is they have done this to themselves by not being able to moderate their own conscience. Sigh ...hopefully things will work out in the end.