So where do you start?
I've been reading peoples experiences for several months now trying to figure out what I want to say but how do you put your whole life into a few words?
I was a born in but have been happy and free for 5 years and luckily for me my husband felt the same way and we have freed our children from being brainwashed
with the lies we so regularly believed without questioning, well it was that way for me although my husband had a lot more to put up with, I just bumbled along like most witnesses.
So how did my eyes get opened?
I think as I got older in the Jws, I started to see people for what they were, the things people got away with because there dad was an elder or as my husband was an MS, the things he heard and were covered up in meetings and I used to ask Why is Jehovah allowing this to happen? Why are these men in the position to offer advise when they hide who they are behind there position in the congregation and use it to bring brothers down, people who they are meant to love and die for?
This is basically what happened to our family, when I think back now , we were used as a family in one elders agenda since before we got married, my husband is a very moral, upstanding man and this elder used information he had to undermine family relations so he could gain an allly in the meetings and instead of encourging us to sort problems out, used this to drive a wedge which ultimately cost us my husbands family for many years.
But this backfired on him as he didnt thinks my husband would show concern when his own children went off the rails and he covered up all there exploits.
Thus started 4 years of a campaign to undermine and insinuate things about our family which made me in the end emotionally breakdown everytime we went to the meetings.
It started by ignoring us if we went to speak to him, walking in a different direction if he saw us coming, sitting on the opposite side of the hall or if we sat on the same row, making it clear to others that he didnt speak to us by getting up and moving seats, him and his family.
Then he wouldnt take our hands if he was taking a study including the children and if my husband was taking an item, he would get up and walk outside and then come back in when he had finished, one particularly time others not only me noticed during a public talk my husband was getting he did his watchtower study and read the songbook instead of listening. When tackled he told elders he didnt have a problem and it was us that was causing trouble.
Nothing we tried made it better and we endured this treatment for years until it came to a head for me a few years later.
My husband suffered a road rage incident, not his fault, but due to its nature, had to go and make a statement to the police. He told our book study conductor what had happened as he had to miss a couple of meeting to go to the police station, the other person was charged , end of story. Due to our daughter being quite ill and in hospital at the same time, we missed quite a few meetings in a row, but when we returned some JWS stopped speaking to us or kept my husband at arms length. Then we arrived at one meeting for my husband to be ordered into the second school again, and again be grilled by several elders as to why he hadnt told them he had been charged with assault over a road rage incident!
When they heard it wasnt true, all the families were asked were they got the information and it came back to this elder and his family! When questioned he denied it, even blaming his mother in law but he was the source, he had heard on the JW grapevine of an incident and lead people to believe it was true and still they did nothing about him.
Ive had elders, even a circuit overseer come and tell me they were going to get to the bottom of his behaviour but they washed there hands of it as though he had some hold over them but the thing that got to me the most was after I couldn`t cope with the situation any longer as it had caused so much mental anquish, there solution was to tell us to move congregations! I was stunned, and it started me thinking this isnt how true christians behave, let an elder behave in such a way, it was out of sight out of mind, you leave, problem solved.
That was a big eye opener and it started me questioning lots of things that I wasnt sure I believed was right.
Earlier I mentioned our daughter was quite ill and in hospital, she had a brain conditon called syringomyelia and scoliosis of the spine that required surgery including a blood transfusion which was non negotiable with the surgeon.
We looked for advise from the elders and received basically personal advice. Nothing from the bible, just what they thought. One said just have it no one will know and just come back to the meeting, another said we were bad parents if we gave her a transfusion and it would cost my husband being an ms, while a third said just pray to jehovah and beg forgiveness if we decided to put her well being above our beliefs!
No support or understanding, no one even came to see her in hospital as it was announced without our knowledge that we didnt want visitors due to the nature of her operation! Just when we needed the support and with the other situation going on as well, we received no help at all from our loving brotherhood! Later it was told to us by an elder it was so no one could be stumbled by our actions and we could just come back in no questions asked but by then my eyes were truly opened. Without that transfusion, my daughter would not be here today and from then I decided there was no way I would put a religion and their man made rules before my family, God would not expect me to do that!
Friends said they understood and would still be friends with us even if we were`nt witnesses but they soon disappeared, one even telling my husband in an email that by leaving he was the spawn of Satan!
Sorry if our posts sound similar we thought we would introduce ourselves together, hope you dont mind. Heres hubby--