Hi, Lynne. Welcome aboard. Please don’t mind this formatting if it all comes out in one horrible long paragraph; its hard to format text in this forum on a Mac. I'm new to the forum myself. Your story sounds kind of familiar to me. I didn't leave the organization until I was 17, but as you know, even that's a late age for an unbaptized girl. Which I was. I was never baptized for the same reasons as you describe, although there was pressure now and then. I wasn't one of those slack JW's or anything, my family was quite serious about it, I think that I escaped a lot of the congregational pressure that a teenager might usually face because of two reasons: 1) my mom died when I was ten, and I think people just felt sorry for me, and maybe expected me to screw up a little and 2) my dad had health problems that didn't permit him to handle anymore responsibility at the Kingdom Hall than serving as a Ministerial Servant, so his status in the congregation wasn't exactly riding on my baptism or anything. Anyway, as to your question of baptism, it's like marriage...if you have any doubts whatsoever, DON'T DO IT. Why would you make a commitment like that when you didn't want to? Of course the pressure to be baptized is immense, but you seem to have handled it thus far. My reasons for leaving? Lost interest, felt dead inside, wanted things that the Society simply would not let me have, it was boring, it was boring, it was boring. Did I find something else? No, not immediately. I had read James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I had decided that like his main character, Steven Daedelus, I didn't care if the confines of religion were justified or not, I was making a choice to defy them, and if that choice meant condemnation then I welcomed condemnation just fine. It was dramatic in my head, but real life kept just going, and surprisingly well. Here is a really brief list of the transition phases I went through for the next 12 years or so (seriously generalizing here)
1. Left what I thought was the truth simply because it wasn’t for me. This meant that I was able to enjoy tons of things that I couldn’t before, have a life with interests, be free, etc. etc., but unfortunately it also meant that every now and then I cried under my blankets for hours because I was going to die in Armageddon.
2. Began to realize that the truth wasn’t really the truth after all.
This meant that I stopped crying under my blankets, and started feeling better about my life. I stopped feeling eternally doomed and damned and just started to feel normal. Amazing. I could now get serious about college and other things that never felt within reach. I sure didn’t like to talk about my JW past with anyone, however, because now although I felt free from blame for my worldly life, I felt somehow responsible for growing up in a weirdo religion.
3. Finally realized that the truth was not only a lie, but a crazy cult. Once I got away long enough from the cult, I saw it for what it was. This only took about 10 years. In the meantime, did I seek out spirituality of any sort? No, not actively. Most of the time I didn’t feel it was necessary. Sometimes though I felt sore inside for lack of it. My life had meaning though, something that I never felt while part of the organization. In the Org, I only mattered as long as I was a faithful member of Jehovah’s organization, an upstanding young Christian, etc. etc. My hopes, goals and talents meant nothing if they weren’t being used to promote the Org’s idea of God’s Kingdom. Nothing about my personality mattered one bit to anyone in that Kingdom Hall.
Last year I went church shopping for a place I could feel comfortable, get my weekly fix of heavy liturgy (something we all missed out on if we grew up JW) and belong to a community as I was about to graduate from college and leave that one behind. I also wanted to get involved in some church-organized community service. I visited an Episcopal church and I enjoyed it immensely, but I ended up becoming a member of the 2nd church I visited, a downtown Presbyterian church with a kind and interesting congregation. The Presbyterian message meant a lot to me because of many reasons, for one, there is no fiery hell, and that my ex-brothers and sisters, is the one I will never be able to get over. Presbyterian’s do not believe they are the only true religion, they do believe in responsible family planning, they allow all to take part in the communion- I was allowed to take part although I wasn’t baptized! They are not a perfect Religion; I don’t believe there is one. But I felt for the first time ever in my life, that if there was a right place to be in, then I was in it. These people were interested in who I was, they were interested in working hard to make their neighborhood a better place, they were educated, compassionate people of all political persuasions and I fit right in. Just as my Inquirer’s Classes were about to end and my membership was about to officially begin, the Youth Pastor took me out to lunch and asked if I wanted to be baptized. “Adult baptisms show God’s presence in our congregation,” was among some of the beautiful things he said to me concerning the matter. It only took me a few hours to think that one through, of course I did. It felt so different than languishing in the JW’s for 17 years, being told again and again that I needed to make this drastic commitment that meant my very life. Now I am a baptized member of this wonderful Presbyterian church. They don’t monitor my behavior, and they offer me many opportunities to get involved in civic and volunteer life. I could go on and on, but I’m not trying to sell the Presbyterian church to you. What I’m trying to do is show you that I left the JW’s for the wild open, and it was okay. I left and I did feel at times that there was something missing, and it was okay. 12 years later I found something wonderful spiritually and it didn’t matter how long it took me to find it, because in the meantime I found all these other things out about myself, through education, through relationships with friends & boyfriends, and through work.
As far as your family goes Lynne, I could go into that story but this boundless paragraph would drag on and on. Besides, you know your mother best and how you handle that situation is up to you. Sometimes before my dad died, it was worth it to let him talk about Jehovah and the congregation and eternal gloom and doom and even agree here and there, sometimes It was only worth it to steer the conversation to something else. You need to follow your heart and I know it sounds easier than it is but that’s the best way to start things off.
