Hi! I am going to try to introduce myself without giving away any evidence of who I am as I am not DF or DA, but just wanting to figure out what is right for me to do!
I was born into the JW world only to have parents DF as a young child and we celebrated all the holidays without the "holy" meanings and I have such wonderful memories of that. When I was 10, the elders stopped by and the rest is history.......I had to quit dance lessons, stop going to my friends house, and no more birthday parties, etc etc. I thought it was great though. (did I really?) We had this great important thing to do, everyone was going to die but us JW's and now I was a good one! Oh, but I secretly kept my worldly friends and even had boyfriends during this time. Fast forward------teenage years--------------wow was I wild, except for about a year during which time I was baptized. Got DF'd, married a worldly guy, mom was a walking crying basket case and dad wouldn't have much to do with me. This lasted about 1 1/2 years and I was desperately trying to get back "in", after getting to celebrate 2 Xmas's again with the worldly husband.
Back in, still having a hard time not having "worldly" friends, couldn't make any in the org, and just didn't fit in. Gee, am I just one of those hopeless cases? Is there no hope for me? Living in guilt for way too many years, feeling inadequate to be a worshiper of the Almighty God Jehovah, and definately NOT one of his favorite followers, I have dealt with very bad feelings of myself, along with resentment for this religion that makes it so hard to follow God and be happy doing it. It is all up to our devotion to the org that keeps us close or not. Well, there have been a lot of issues in my life that the org does not have a clue about. I never understood why we couldn't read the supposed "poison" of an apostate to try to refute what they said if we have minds that are smart and trained well. After all, we are swimming in poison in this world every minute aren't we? How can a piece of paper harm us that much? (or the internet) Also, why do the elders have a special book that according to my mother-in-law, we don't know what kind of rules are in it, so we need to listen to what they say. ??? Birthdays, wow, the info I read about that was so cool! Job's sons had special days, and yeah, they had $$ so they celebrated it like the others with $$. God made us all special, right? So darn it! I want a special day! (oops, being selfish, hah?) I want my children to have a special day!
Does Satan make those supposed "loving christian neighbors" of mine seem nice to swerve me from the "truth" and those fake warm people?
I am scared to pieces right now. I feel like I really don't want to be in this religion, but of course, I also have these nagging voices telling me that I am turning my back on God, that I am evil and falling right into all of your evil hands. This consumes all of my thoughts, don't want to lose my family, and my husband seems to think that if this isn't the truth, than what else is there to go to? He thinks he is just evil inside and God will probably just destroy him. I have friends that go to church and are so happy to go. It is fun, they have friends there, they enjoy their worship. I don't enjoy mine. But Satan makes it enjoyable for them so they don't see the true religion? None of this makes sense to me, it just doesn't seem logical.....of course, I am thinking with my human mind and not God's mind. I need to scream!
To all those on chat tonight, thanks for letting me scream there!
Redneckgurl