If I had known it was a cult I'm pretty sure I would have closed the door in their faces the first time they rang my doorbell. LOL Hell, even after being involved for 16-17 years and inactive for 3, I still didn't realize it was a cult....until I came here.
I was always interested in what mankind's purpose and destiny was. Don't know if growing up with the shadow of the Viet Nam War hanging ominously overhead had something to do with this or not, but what came after death was on my mind a lot from the time I was about 11 or so on. Did we go to a "heaven" or a "hell", did we go on to be born again as humans, forgetting our previous lives and hoping to improve until we graduated to.....? I was interested in mysticism, reading all about Edgar Casey and others who supposedly were in touch with the spirit realm. I didn't stress about these things, but I was very interested. I tried reading the Bible, but got pretty lost, especially in the Old Testament.
I grew up, got married and had kids and didn't have too much time to worry about this stuff much for a time. My marriage was pretty much crap from the beginning, but we (more like I) kept trying to pull it together for the next 9 years. I was finally coming to admit to myself that it was never going to work and that I needed to move on, which was very, very hard for me. I don't let go of anything easily or quickly.
I was miserable and searching for meaning in life when I saw a guy on TV, in a regular suit, sitting behind a desk, talking reasonably about the Bible...and actually explaining what stuff meant. I can't remember what the group is called now, but they are the ones with The Plain Truth magazine. I was impressed that they weren't crazy evangelical types screaming at their followers to repent with tears streaming down their faces or smacking people on the forehead declaring them healed in some dramatic display before begging for contributions. I would try to catch their half-hour show whenever I could, although there was some frustration with the way they always seemed to leave their explanations unfinished. They sure primed the pump, though, because when I first met the Witnesses, it was like I recognized them.
I'd just moved to Illinois from Alaska, and had just gotten settled in (alone...husband was still in Alaska and was scheduled to go straight from there to Georgia for Advanced Officer Training) when JW's knocked on my door. Here I was, lost, on my own with two young children, no friends in a new town, pretty sure I was about to be discarded by my husband, full of questions ....and they had answers. It was like finding water in the desert at the time. I didn't understand then that I was trading my freedom and my future for a utopian pipedream.