Greetings,
My wife and I are new to this Forum, and really, we're now new to life as well. Or rather, LIFE is new to us, NORMAL life that is. I don't want to turn this into a novel (at least, not yet). So I'll just give a brief synopsis for now, and we can get into details later.
My wife and I both grew up in the "Truth". We both grew up in "spiritually strong" families that were "pillars of the congregation". During our teen years and our early twenties we were both very active and enjoyed many various "special priviledges" (Translation: extra-curricular slave duties to make you feel even better about yourself and your "spiritual maturity"). When we got married and had our two boys, we were the "perfect" little JW family, always there, always participating, friends from all over, etc., etc. But...
There's always a "but" in these, isn't there. Anyway, My wife and I both had this nagging little shortcoming that most of the time we successfully hid, both from others and ourselves. But it always had a tendency to rear its ugly head now and then and cause a problem. What was "it"? We both had the ability to....dare I say it?.....(Current JW's close your eyes..)....We both could THINK! Yes, we were cursed with the awful and "sinful" tendency to think and reason logically about things. Not a good ailment to have when you are neck deep in a mind control cult, huh? From our early teens, both of us questioned illogical teachings of the WTS, without ever getting reasonable or straight answers. Usually we would get some "kind counsel and encouragement" about our "bad attitudes", which of course, as loyal "sheep" we gulped down heartily and said "thankyou" for the "correction". We tried our best to hold onto the now stale mantras like "Jehovah will correct things in his due time", "be patient and wait on Jehovah", "Trust His Organization to eventually correct our understanding of that matter", blah, blah, blah... But as the years passed, the doctrines that didn't make sense, the rampant hypocrisy coupled with unbelievable self-righteousness, the politics at every level of authority in the Organization, and personally experiencing the "true brotherly love" that some of these people practiced - all of this started driving us to really examine if we, or rather the Organization, really had "THE TRUTH".
Of course, many facets of their doctrines, their Bible Chronology, and the history of the development of their current beliefs (which amazingly is right there in their own publications, but of course with the constant deluge of new material, who has time to look back..) can't stand up to a real and thorough logical examination. It has taken us roughly two years to make a complete break. The funny thing is, our families(still in and very active) think we are only "inactive" and are simply still hurting from some bad experiences, and as soon as we "get over it" we'll be back. I don't look forward to the final confrontation with both families. During the last two years, we've had several extremely heated and emotional discussions with them about all of this, and it is really painful, as most of you know already, for both us and them.
It is also almost mind numbing to be essentially starting over with life itself. My mind spins when I think of all that we missed out on, and all that is still out there to do, believe, learn, enjoy, experience, etc. As most of you can probably tell, we're still in the middle of our journey out of the WTS and making sense of where we are and where we're going. I hope we can not only gain a lot of insight and understanding from this online group, but also to extend our hands in friendship and help others who are going through, or have gone through, this "Twilight Zone" experience.
Well, I said I wouldn't write a novel, so I had better cut it short here. I'm sure as we continue we'll all get better acquainted.
I wish you all the best, and look forward to the new friendships that might develop here.
Best regards,
Brandon and Stephanie Bartlett