Did you enjoy being a JW? (page 3)

anewme

I thought I did.

When I first discovered it at 17 I was astounded by the persuasive force of the Watchtower and Awake and the zealous witnesses and the meetings! It was 1972 and the whole congregation was on fire with enthusiasm. I wondered where these wonderful people had been all my life.
They were such a contrast to my own family embroiled in alcoholsim and catholicism and divorce and discouragement.

But I think my background of worthlessness prepared by my alcoholic mother and neglectful father paved the way for me to be an exceptionally zealous publisher. I discovered if I pioneered and gave talks and had the book study in my home and this and that I could be SOMEBODY in the JWs!

I abandoned my own family and embraced wholeheartedly the JWs.
I pioneered. I went where the need was greater. I played in the convention orchestra when they still had live players. I went to every meeting without missing one for years. Had the book study in my home.
Kept myself chaste until I married at 28. My husband quickly rose in rank and became an elder.
Our lives were thoroughly enmeshed in the org. Both of us were soldiers in the truth for Jehovah.

But the years went by. His brothers married and had babies, we did not.
They bought houses. We did not.
They took trips. We did not.
We had the elder who was always gone to some island or part of the world and would return with "Greetings from Costa Rica!" or wherever. I grew more and more jealous of other wealthier witnesses.
We lived in a wealthy Bay Area town. The overseer drove a yellow brand new Porsche to the meetings.
I felt this was kind of wrong..a showy display..I tried to defend his need to drive a Porsche. But what were the others to think. We who had given up college due to warnings like the 69 Awake May 22 pge.15.
His wife drove her new Lexus.
All the elder body was rich in that hall.
I started to compare my zealous life with those who seemed more balanced in their style.

I've complained to you all before how I begged my husband to slow down in the org. Lets take a weekend off or go somewhere or meet me for lunch or turn off the phone and just snuggle on the sofa. Lets have a life.

No! We were a 24/7 call center for all the witnesses and his Bible Studies. He would keep his Bible Studies at our house for 3 1/2 -4 hours just so he could get his time in as a pioneer! He did not care that I was going nuts!!

I would just get up and leave the study in our living room after about the second hour. Ihad things to do, pets to tend to, whatever. We did not have a private life anymore. I thought my husband was getting sick in the head. He was changing. He thought I was spiritually sick.

I went to Kaiser for depression. They heard me out about my life. In their opinion I needed a change.
In their professional opinion I was mentally enmeshed to a very unhealthy point in the Watchtower and wit my husband. They felt I needed more freedom to express my own thoughts and live life the way I wanted. That I would only recover from the depression if these changes were made.

I made some changes. I'm out now and divorced from my first love.

Not a day goes by I dont think of him and my witness family and my former life at least 50 times.
Last night I prayed to Jehovah I hurt so bad for the wretched outcome of all that pressure I was under.

If time heals all wounds, this one is going to take a long time.

joelbear

i hated the meetings, they were terribly boring and repetitive. i liked visiting with friends and going out to dinner after the meeting.

i didn't like door to door work, but enjoyed having conversations about the Bible with people, using logic to determine what the Bible really said.

i will always regret not being allowed to go to college when i was young, but i probably would have become sexually active and maybe died of AIDS, so i have mixed feelings.

i am sad that i have lost touch with my family since being DFed, but i think it would have happened anyway since they don't like it that i am gay.

i miss my JW friends that I grew up with and the ones I had in Jacksonville, but we really don't have much in common any more, so i kind of doubt we would be friends anyway.

Lady Lee

I hated the "work" part of it all. When I went to the hall (every week cuz I was married to an elder so we never missed unless we were sick and even then I got grief over missing a meeting)I went mostly to talk to friends and interpret. It was my only chance to socialize before or mostly after a meeting. After the girls started school even that was a pain cuz I wanted to get the girls to bed. And I hated that superficial typr of studying. Like how hard is it to read a short 3 sentence paragraph and find the answer to the matching question.

I so hate being talked down to. Hmmm just realized that is probably why I hated it so much when my non-JW husband (the one I just left) talked down to me.

KAYTEE

Looking back at 30 yrs of life within the Org. it really was unreal to think how unhappy one can be and still carry on. One of the first occasions I felt like this - I went by car to Switzerland for a holiday, unfortunately with another family of witnesses, (husband was an elder). There was a convention in Zurich, where the brothers spoke only in German for 8 hours day. (I dont understand or speak German and neither did this elder) on leaving the convention the brother turned to me and said. "Did you feel the Holy Spirit?" Now I thought that Holy Spirit was an understanding of something said and I certainly could not feel ANYTHING, as I couldn't understand ANYTHING! This elder wanted to go to the convention EVERY DAY, when we only had one week's holiday - I refused.

When trying to understand the authenticity of the Bible and the personality of Jehovah, I could not get my head round their inconsistent teachings, this greatly troubled me. But when I questioned "last month's understanding" compared to the latest thinking, they could not or as usual would not give me a clear answer.

So the answer to your question is NO - I was terribly unhappy, but unfortunately I am only able to say that looking back on matters.

KT

Finally-Free

No. I hated being a JW. I believed in it but I hated it. Not because of the meetings or service, but because of the f*cked up people. The only reason I remained a JW was because I was married to one - I did not want to live forever in a world filled with people like that. As soon as I found out it was a pack of lies I was gone.

If I could burn every memory of the JWs out of my brain without doing myself injury I would not hesitate one minute.

W

jwfacts

I loved it for the friendships. Even when i could no longer bear to listen to what i knew was twisted reasoning i still kept going for the socialisation afterwards, and i still miss it greatly.

In the back of my mind, even as a kid i always had Pauls words "If the dead are not to be raised let us eat, drink, for tomorrow we are to die". I always knew that there were other things I would rather be doing if it was not for Armageddon, and just hoped living a life of sacrifice was not all in vain.

hamsterbait

YES - when I still bought their fancy chronology arguments and anti typical this and that stuff. And it gave me a comforting fantasy world, when my own was intolerable.

With reading came knowledge, with knowledge came wisdom.

I only started to hate it when I realised that they didn't want me to preach what they had told me anymore. To preach "new truth" that contradicted itself.

HB

free2beme

It was life, and I enjoyed it sometimes and hated it at other times, same with everything in life.

Tez

Their smiles looked genuine. They seemed to love talking to each other.

I always thought the smiles and conversations were very superficial and used to dislike going to meetings. I enjoyed answering up at the Watchtower study, I used to like to hit the nail on the head whereas other would pussy foot round the issues. I also liked going on the FS but realised eventually that if I didn't enjoy the association of other witnesses who was I to go out and preach about what a wonderful worldwide family we had!!!!! i think if you really are a lover of TRUTH then eventually you see through the false image that is portrayed and you cannot get anything out of it.

Carol

When my mother became a witness, I liked the idea of Paradise and all the friendly animals. I didn't like being made fun of and being beat up because I was differant and I didn't like the way my brothers were treated. I enjoyed the friendships I made at the KH, but as I got older I didn't like being chastised for doing certain things and knowing that the elder's kids were doing the same things or worse and getting away with it. I didn't like being treated like a second-class citizen because I am female and my father wasn't a JW. The good times far outweigh the bad, I just didn't like a bunch of uneducated, imperfect, chauvinistic men sitting in judgment of me. I felt then and feel now that whatever I choose to do and however I choose to live is between me and the God I choose to believe in.

Did you enjoy being a JW?

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