Another Family Escapes Their Clutches

by OnTheWayOut 9 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  OnTheWayOut

  My coworker actually was involved in training me, and I used to be a quiet good little JW when he met me. I first shared information about him on this forum 7 years ago when he was just starting to learn that I was no longer going to the Kingdom Hall.

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/125918/1/Pressure-to-conform-from-his-wifes-congregation#.U6t3c5RX-uY

  So I had a chance to catch up with him. He went to the Kingdom Hall less and less over these years. His step-son hated it and he had another baby since my first post about him and both of the little ones wanted birthdays and holidays and a normal life. His wife caved in and let them do BOTH- Kingdom Hall stuff and "worldly" stuff.

  The worldly stuff won out. She started dreading going to the meetings and stopped altogether. My coworker says the elders stopped calling after a bit. I asked if she was kicked out and he said "I don't know." He also said she replaced JW's with selling Avon and that almost seemed like a cult to him. I asked what he preferred and he said the kids were free to do what they want so Avon was way better.
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  The link will say that his mother is JW and that he married a lady who studied and got baptized after about a year of marriage. He was never baptized.
• 

  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  Sounds like a good plot for the next WT video!
• 

  cult classic

  Good for them!
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  Billy the Ex, the original link would be a good one. He slows down his meeting attendance (as the husband of a 'sister') because they bug him about wearing a tie.

  Thanks, Cult Classic.

  My coworker added that another factor in his wife leaving was the birth of their daughter some less than 5 years ago where the blood doctrine became an issue and he openly questioned the doctrine and the hospital clergyman discussed the issue with him and his wife. She is out now and her and the daughter were never given blood, but it came up again in the next pregnancy. At the last minute, the same doctor that delivered the daughter years before refused to perform the necessary ceasarian delivery because of the blood issue. It had to be done that day and an oncologist on duty did the surgery regardless of the blood issue. No blood was necessary to deliver their son, but she found early stages of cancer and removed her ovaries and probably saved her all kinds of therapy and treatments and the like and she recovered very well.

  So something snapped with her and she lets the kids have a normal life. But she won't bad-mouth or even discuss JW stuff with her husband.
• 

  Londo111
• 

  ruderedhead

  Love to hear about families exiting together! Thank you for sharing, and glad to hear your friend's wife is doing well after such a scare!
• 

  minimus

  "Escaping" sometimes takes time.
• 

  SAHS

  “. . . the blood doctrine became an issue . . .” “. . . it came up again in the next pregnancy . . .”

  Sometimes it takes some kind of serious crisis to shake people awake and force them to see things in a new and objective light. Anyone who was never a JW can obviously see how ridiculous and immoral it is for any man or group of men to dictate and insist that a person’s life – especially the life of a baby – must be sacrificed for some policy which is invalid and plain illogical. But there’s nothing like being faced with the death of one’s self or their child to cause some JWs to finally wake up and use their head. (That is, if the brainwashing hasn’t become too hardwired into their head.)
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  Thanks to Londo111, ruderhead, Minimus for your thoughts and stopping in.

  SAHS, yeah. I actually sometimes hope some "crisis" occurs for my wife. Hopefully, not a terrible devastation, but something to cause a wakeup call.