It looks like today is going to continue to be a day of surprises for me.
One of my daughter's classmates called earlier and said she wanted to go "trick or treating" with my children this Hallowe'en. Normally, this wouldn't have surprised me, except that when we first met this family, it was on the little girl's birthday, and her mother made it very clear that they didn't observe birthdays because it was against their faith. *RED ALERT*
So anyway, I wanted to clarify with the mother today, because she had told me in the interim that they were JWs, and I didn't want to cause any offense or do anything that would get the little girl in trouble later on when her mother found out. So we spoke and I asked her whether her daughter had permission to go "trick or treating", and she said yes.
I mentioned that I thought that was very interesting because I thought that JWs do not observe Hallowe'en or other holidays. So she proceeded to tell me that her family has been gradually withdrawing from the JWs and that they had decided for themselves that observing Hallowe'en and Valentine's Day was OK. For the time being they still feel that observing birthdays and Christmas are wrong, so they won't be doing those holidays.
Then I bit the bullet and disclosed that I grew up in a JW family and I understood how difficult it is to go through that transition. She was quite surprised (she said because I'm "so nice" HA HA) and had no idea that I had a JW background. I asked her if something had happened to make her decide to quit, and she said yes, but she was not able to talk about it on the phone. So I offered her a listening ear when she was ready, and said I'd be happy to talk with her when the children were in school and she had some time to herself.
I just wanted to let you all know about this! I'll keep you posted on how things turn out.
Love, Scully