An elder set up a 'kangaroo court' with my 4 adult kids another elder and me, in the Hall after a meeting. We had all been going through some terrible times as a family...He sat me on one side and them on the other and invited them to tell me all my failings throughout their lives...
Some of what they recounted was laughable really in hindsight, and really it was an arena for them to just let off the steam they'd collected over family issues relating to my divorce from their violent father etc, running out of issues, they dragged up stuff that had been reconciled and put to bed years before all over again. It was one of the most painful of my life.
That experience changed us all, it didn't just break my heart and my spirit, it changed all our relationships from family ones into something completely different. I have never recovered from it really. It was such an unnatural scenario, destroying our previous ability to talk and discuss problems normally and lovingly. I remember driving to a friend's home and collapsing with grief.
Later, some of the kids apologised confessing it was very wrong and wishing it hadn't happened. I challenged the elder afterwards that it was totally unscriptural and his defence was that my eldest son had demanded it. He claimed he thought it might help us all?
No excuse, but whatever, the damage was done and irreparable. We have never recovered from that breach.
Good old WTBS elders, eh?
Loz x