were you ever truly happy as a jw?

compound complex

Yes, I was.

The Society's demand that we use publications and direct attention to the Big O turned me off. I wanted to use the Bible only.

Welcome to the forum, emanresu!

CoCo

IsaacJ22

I was for like 2 months. But I wasn't born in, I was a convert.

moshe

JWs have been convinced that standing in sh*t up to their neck is a spiritual paradise.-

finally awake

Not on any consistent basis. Once the congo decided we were "serious" studies and started including us in the social things, there were occasions where I felt like I fit in and I belonged.

As a very small child, in California, where the people were open and friendly. There was always something going on, a picnic, beach trip, mini-golfing, trips to Knott's Berry Farm on Halloween night to avoid the trick or treaters. Then, my family moved away, sure they were going to save the extended family in the mid-west by preaching to them directly. We lived in three different states in a span of 9 months, and went from lovely warm weather to freezing our butts off in Minnesota. The congregations we moved to were all heavily related to one another and had no time for a family from Calif. We were broke financially. It was no longer a fun, happy life, rather one of miserable drudgery...Oh yeah, the extended family quickly got sick of being preached at and refused to have anything further to do with us.

WTWizard

Only in anticipation of what was supposed to happen. Ultimately, it was all about masking problems and getting hounded to do ever more in field circus for no reward. Once I was baptized, the hoped-for things didn't show up. Later, every time something came that I could enjoy, they would take it away from me and then expect me to be just as happy for Jehovah.

About the only thing that could have made me happy at that point would have been to see that Almighty Lowlife Scumbag and every single one of his filthy angels bound tightly.

mynameislame

I remember having some enjoyable times when I was younger. I can relate to Painted ToeNail's activity list except we went to Shakey's pizza on Halloween.

I was raised as a JW and don't really remember when things turned bad. Probably when I started wanting sex and had to feel guilty about it.

It could be the "when I was young" syndrome but I think life was simpler and more enjoyable in when I was younger. No 60 hour work weeks at to pay for a flat screen tv that can be seen from the space shuttle so that I can watch two million channels of nothing on cable while reading jw-net on my ipad and listening to music on my iphone etc.... Like Calvin's dad in Calvin and hobbs says: I liked when you coud send someone a letter and you wouln't hear back from them for at least a week.

LV101

NEVER!

MrFreeze

Well... hard to tell if I was happy or deluded. I guess I was sort of happy and quite zealous when I got baptised at the age of 12. That didn't last very long. It didn't take long for guilt to set in and fearing I wasn't good enough.