When my Dad was in the military and I had to go to school on the base, I couldn't salute the flag and they all kept making fun of me. The other time was when my Mom went to pick up my Dad at the base and they were saluting the flag. One of the men told her to get out of the car cause they were saluting the flag. She tells them that she is one of Jehovah's wittnesses and refused to do it. He was quite upset with her and I remember hiding behind the back seat....crying. I'll never forget those years as long as I live.
What's The Most Traumatic Thing That's Ever Happened To You As A Witness?
by minimus 27 Replies latest jw friends
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FlyingHighNow
Facing down angry doctors over the blood issue when I was pregnant.
Being flirted with by an elder. I had looked at brothers as brothers and felt very safe around them. Once he did this to me and other sisters, brothers became men and I never felt the same around them again. The elder ended up almost having an affair with one sister who wisely turned him in. He lost all privileges and I hope he left all together.
Watching my children tormented by elder's kids.
Being the brunt of gossip, when I was very ill and had just had super duper major surgery, for missing meetings. People majorly resenting helping my family during this time.
The last three helped my kids and I get out. My exhusband is still inactive and cannot figure out why he can't seem to stay motivated to go back.
Flyin'
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nojudgement
Ding, ding, ding...and the winner is once again, Judicial Committee Meeting!!
Growing up an Elder's daughter I vowed I would take all my stuff to the grave and never put myself through that kind of humiliation that I had observed from afar. In my late 20's, my 2 JW friends and I had gone on a cruise in Europe and Egypt and had a little too much fun. A regular Pornea-fest. We all came clean when we came home. What a mistake....the Judicial Meetings were absolutely horrifying! They gave us 4 elders since it was such a big case. (One was a JC trainee, how nice!) All the details were so unnecessary....who touched who where, how long, who climaxed...how many times? In front of men who barely knew me!! Why couldn't you just say..."I fornicated! End of story." One of the elders had the gall to suggest. "Did you ever think of cutting your trip short so that you could come home and immediately confess this?" I was appalled...like yeah, sure, let me just catch the next flight out of Cairo so you can immediately get your rocks off on my story of sin. We were all privately reproved....I breathed a sigh of relief...or so I thought...next came the...
2nd place winner...SPECIAL NEEDS TALK (4 weeks after the private reproof). We were all told that we had to be there. That it would be very generic but it was to warn the congregation about Pornea and loose conduct. They felt they needed to define it again in case the congregation wasn't clear on what was okay and what wasn't. Imagine having every detail of your trip and escapades explained from the platform without using names. Hello!!! Who just went on a big trip??We were all horrified. I would have rather been walked up the front, stripped down bare @ss naked and whipped - then to sit there and let the whole congregation hear about every detail of our sex lives.
That whole experience gave me SHINGLES!!! SHINGLES at 28! How nice!
3rd Place - My best friend was DF'd about a month later and I had to pretend like she was dead. That was torturous. I couldn't handle it. I lasted about 1 month of not talking to her...then I called and that was the beginning of the end for me. I was never the same....
It took me about 7 years to fully fall out after that...but that's what tipped me over. Those were the 3 most horrible experiences of my life. All of them happened because I was a JW. What does that tell you?
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PurpleV
When I was 5 I was bitten by a vicious dog out in service and had to go to the hospital. The "householder" took his time producing the dog's rabies certificate so I was THISCLOSE to having the rabies series.
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Hapgood
I was admitted into the hospital unexpectedly after hemorrhaging. My blood count was half of what it should be (didn't know that at the time) . My JW hubby was not there (he went home to get me a few things, and to take our daughter to McDonalds for something to eat ), but my parents were there, they are not JWs. The surgery was planned for the next morning, but after getting the test results back, the Doctor wanted to do the surgery right away. I had to stand up alone to the Doctor, to an angry nurse (boy was she mad), the Anesthesiologist, my crying parents, I was insisting that in no way what so ever would I allow a blood transfusion. I really didn't understand the whole blood issue thing. Later, I managed to get a hold of an Elder, so he showed up with his wife for support, and my hubby showed up just before I went into surgery. It was pretty scary thing to go through, not knowing if something should happen, I wasn't going to get a blood transfusion, I could bleed to death and never wake up. The first thing that I saw when I woke up from surgery was the Anesthesiologists' bent head, for some reason he had his head wrapped in a red bandanna. From my vantage point his head looked like a hanging bag of blood (ok I was groggy), that really gave me a start.
Hapgood
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Big Shooter
No judgement,
What I clearly remember was the day I told my parents that my soon to be wife was pregnant. It was on a meeting nite. Where did my dad go? He went that night to the meeting to tell the elders what had happened! Instead of staying with the family during a time like that, he rushes to the meeting!! Those things always stay with you. -
Hyghlandyr
The most traumatic thing that ever happened to me was when I looked a mirror and realized I was doomed to be alone in my beauty. And then George Bush outlawed cloning, my one last great hope.
Signed - forever autosexual.
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Swan
Scary nightmares as a child about Jehovah, caused by ...
...scary pictures in the Paradise book!
provided to us by Jehovah God,
you know, the book with the picture of a terrible dragon, pictures of disease and pestilence, pictures of babies being given to burning idols with animal heads instead of the loving God Jehovah...
the same Jehovah God who had Abraham tie up his son and threaten his life at knifepoint...
the same Jehovah God who made the earth open up and swallow people plunging...
the same Jehovah God who flooded the earth so only a few people were left alive clinging to the last remaining bit of land...
the same Jehovah God who liked to blow skyscrapers apart...
the same Jehovah God who liked to rain pestilence down on the people of Egypt...
the same Jehovah God who liked to throw huge rocks at the feet of statues...
the same Jehovah God that had Jezebel cast down to dogs ready eat her flesh...
the same Jehovah God who liked to have it rain fire instead of water every once in a while...
the same Jehovah God who gave Samson the strength to become the first suicide bomber, but without the bomb...
the same Jehovah God who made the fiery sun stand still in the sky so Joshua could increase his body count...
the same Jehovah God that told us that war was bad...
the same Jehovah God who had eternal destruction in store for me if I ate a piece of birthday cake...
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liquidsky
After being raped when I was 17 yrs old, I had to explain what happened in detail to the elders so they could decide for themselves whether I was raped or committed fornication.
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got my forty homey?
Too many to list but basically it involed my Father degrading me in front of others in the hall or at conventions, and assemblies. It seemed as if he enjoyed always making himself look like the "head" of our family by ordering me around or embarrising me in front of folks thus making himself look as if he was doing his christian duty of being a Father and Elder in the congo.
As late as one of the last meetings I attended when I was 20 he gave me a dirty look and gestured me to stop talking to a friend of mine during the meeting, and I decided since I was moving out the house in a couple of days I gave his ass a dirty look as if telling him "Go F*&( yourself this is my last meeting and I out your stupid house and this stupid religon FOREVER!
Conventions were the worst time and memories. It seemed as if I was going to get punished or pushed or hit in the bathroom for something trivial.