Anyone with Happy Memories from being a JW born in, please post here.... (page 5)

OUTLAW

A trip down Memory Lane..

As a JW Kid..

........................... ...OUTLAW

I guess legalism also protected me as well. I was also scared of having sex and getting an STD (still am). That's pretty much it. Hated meetings and field service, especially talking to people. I can never recover all those lost Saturdays and Sundays of not sleeping in. Never liked being forced to comment; I thought it was stupid because we were either summarising what was in the paragraph, or reading directly.

QueenWitch

well, If I hadn't been JW I would not be the person I am today.

The DCs were like a mini vacation for us cuz we were poor. Staying in a hotel was a luxury.

trujw

About the only thing was those horny jw friends of my sister. Praise Jah for their um um let's just say they weren't placing litature those nights they were over

perfect1

Hey Cognac-

I see what youre saying

AWARE- you too!

I guess I am just shocked so many people think the WTBTS saved them from STDs.

dreamgolfer

Free Food (when they had food running programs) at the CA's and DC's - I was chubby them

WhatsInaName

Another thread that I feel I should comment before I got the time to make an introductory post about myself. Anyways...

Sky, AMEN to your OP. There are all these bad things that we now know about the organisation, but being a child they do not strike you as being that odd. What remains is the love and interactions with what you feel are your brothers and sisters (that is, if fate was kind enough to place you in a congregation with reasonable, loving people, which is unfortunately not always the case). I just really felt at home in our cong. Then again, I never experienced any real problems in my youth and my parents were not that strict, so maybe that also caused me to feel at ease during my childhood.

What I see from my own children is that there is only one important thing: children have to be loved and feel loved ALL the time. Then and only then can they feel truly happy. This state of happiness is what comes to mind when thinking about the cong in which I grew up. The fact that the love that I felt was in fact a strictly conditional love was not a real problem; it didn't feel like that at the time (blessed is the ignorant...).

Apart from the love that children should feel in a cong, there is I think also one other beneficial aspect of being a JW as a child and that is the perceived purpose of life. What you do seems to all make sense, like it's the proper thing to do. Having a purpose in life makes you happy/happier by definition.

whathappened

The only thing I can remember is believing I was in a special position with Jehovah and My friends and I were not going to be killed at Armageddon. That is it.

Band on the Run

It made lack of civil rights and civil liberties very concrete to me and affected m career. My mom was expelled from school at 14 b/c of flag salute.

Also, I certainly know what being the "other" is.

Not a single decent memory. Much anguish. My father was extremely phsyically and emotionally violent so it is hard to separate personalty from the religion.

It taught complete deference to illegitimate authority, mockery of education, hatred of all besides JWs. No, I have horrific memories.

If my mom had not been expelled and raised in a mainstream religion, her feelings of self worth would have been higher. Perhaps she would have done something besides cry. I pay a heavy price in the present day.

One possible postiive is that I will do something so routine for normal people and pause, remember the JWs, and savor the experience more than friends. I suspect people who lived in concentration camps have similar experiences.

Chaserious

Hmm.. I liked some of the food they used to have at the assemblies and conventions. Half-frozen orange juice, danishes, and roast beef sandwiches, especially. My family was too poor to take expensive vacations, but a lot of years we went to a DC in various other cities (even though it was frowned upon - my mother didn't like the place we were assigned to), and made a weeklong trip out of it and saw some nearby sites, some of which were good times. It sucked being a kid at a convention where you didn't know anyone though.

My father was also a pretty good guy and tried to organize events that the local kids would enjoy. He also was sometimes reasonable about things, letting us kids do things that were discouraged by the WTS. For example, I was allowed to play on a sports team in high school, and we tried to be kind of quiet about it at the hall since no one else from my congregation went to my high school. In sort of a mixed blessing I had a little bit of success and was featured in some local newspaper articles, so people kind of knew about it. I had to quit for a while but then was able to rejoin. It was one of my favorite experiences of my entire childhood, so I'm glad my father didn't take a hard line on that and also I'm slightly glad for "headship"; if it were up to my Mom, I would have never been allowed to join.

Anyone with Happy Memories from being a JW born in, please post here....