yesterday i had a little spat with my wife.
it's all cleared up today.
she's a wonderful gal and we love each other very much.. but one thing kinda bugs me.
I think, like others here, that it depends on the individual. I apologize more often than my husband, even when I feel I was right. I dislike the tension our arguments create, and I can get mean during arguments sometimes.
Rich has a hard time apologizing, but I don't have to hear I'm sorry to realize he feels it. He generally does something kind, like take the kids and give me a break, or make me tea or something kind. His actions tell me he's sorry.
i have never been a religious person, despite being raised as a witness and going through the motions.
now that i'm out, i'm not a religious person at all.
i don't believe in god, i think there is some sort of higher power, but i'm just not that concerned with learning anything about it.
Nina:
I really found your observations fascinating. My son, Peter, is 5 years old, and despite the fact that my husband and I have not given him any formal religious training (much to the chagrin of my JW mom) he is intensely interested in God. He's been to the KH maybe 10 times, many of those when he was too young to even remember it, he went to his 'worldly' grandfather's funeral, and I found out that at his private British school they said grace before lunch, but basically other than that no exposure whatsoever to religion. And yet, he always says things that shock me -- like asking to pray before a meal (he's seen my parents do it at their house, and he does it at school), or he'll ask me what God would think about something or other.
I really am starting to think that this is sort of like the old homosexuality debate: is it innate or learned? I think faith and being religious just might be innate and I wasn't born with it.
Lucia
i have never been a religious person, despite being raised as a witness and going through the motions.
now that i'm out, i'm not a religious person at all.
i don't believe in god, i think there is some sort of higher power, but i'm just not that concerned with learning anything about it.
I have never been a religious person, despite being raised as a Witness and going through the motions. Now that I'm out, I'm not a religious person at all. I don't believe in god, I think there is some sort of higher power, but I'm just not that concerned with learning anything about it. I just have no 'spiritual need', as my mother says.
I have noticed though that many on this board are still religious/spiritual people, despite having been severely burnt in some cases.
How is it that I, raised by intensely religious people, have turned out that way I have? Why do some have 'faith'? I don't mean to be rude or offend anyone, but I just don't believe. I can't believe. Despite trying hard to believe, wanting to believe, I never could.
Any thoughts? Anybody have a similar experience?
.
i understand from 1 of mum's friends that in a certain road near the kh that people have put notices saying they don't want jws knocking on their door etc.. also 1 persons has put on (their door?
) asking them`y r u persecuting me by knocking on my door' sort of things etc with newspaper cuttings on her door.. did something similiar happen in your area?
In Italy, the Catholic Church gave out these stickers to people to put on their doors saying Jehovah's Witnesses weren't welcome. I remember going to see my grandma and telling her that I would not visit her anymore because she put up the sticker. What a fuc&ing idiot I was.
Wow, that just brought back so many emotions. I miss my grandma.
.
workmates, friends, school friends etc,.
do you ever mention it, or if someone asks you your religion, do you ever mention it, or keep it in your past ??
As a witness I avoided telling classmates or others that I was a witness for a couple reasons.
1. I was embarassed.
2. I led the so-called 'double life'.
As a recovering witness (not DFd or DAd just faded) I do not tell people I was a witness. I will tell them that my parents were witnesses and that my sisters are, or sometimes I'll tell them I was baptized catholic (most people ask if I'm catholic b/c I'm of Italian ancestry) because I was.
It's funny, there are several local employees at the Embassy that are witnesses and have asked me if I was baptized (they see me outside smoking). I say no, mostly because I'm an officer and I don't trust them to be professional about the work relationship, so I'd rather lie to them no so they feel they can continue to work for me. In one case, I had to contact the branch coordinator for Togo while I was doing an asylum investigation on a woman who was a witness and fled due to religious persecution. Of course, I'm very fluent in the language of WTBTS, so he asked me "how do you know all these terms". I told the truth: my parents are witnesses. I just omit that I was.
ona:.
just wanted to say thanks for the christmas card.
it got quite the run around and i received it yesterday.
Ona:
Just wanted to say thanks for the Christmas card. It got quite the run around and I received it yesterday. It went from Oregon to Washington to Uganda to Washington to Togo.
It was very kind of you,
Lucia
aka Freedomrules/fader
sometimes certain times of your life just return to you, and in a moment you're overwhelmed by the feeling and the mood of that moment so long ago when you felt and thought very differently to the way you do now.
for me that happened when i was walking around in the streets of fortitude valley, near brisbane city.
every now and then i would stop and wait for a traffic light to change, and at one of the lights, the pavement was covered with tiny yellow flowers shed from a tree above my head by the balmy river breeze.
Great post, glad you're out.
Wish you much happiness,
fader
for me it was the belief that all people who refuse to become jws are intrinsically bad.
if someone doesn't accept the "truth", naturally it's because "satan-the-devil" has hardened their hearts.
when you're a dub, you tend to ignore the ramifications of this.
Armageddom...what a crock.
this is a spin-off of another thread where my *mild and chaste* friend, mouthy, admitted to wanting to meet her dream man, tom jones, and that she would even go so far as to throw her bloomers at him, if that is what it would take to get his attention!
well, the mental picture this painted was far too much for me to bear, so i encouraged her to save her red polka-dotted "unmentionables", not only because she might need them in the future, but because i didn't think she'd have to go that far to get his attention.
and i said that - because of a personal experience with him.
Let's see:
I took a picture with Jimmy Carter this morning. Also saw Rosalynn and their son Jeffrey, didn't take pics with them.
I met George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice last July (was on CNN for one second with Condi Rice). Also met Barbara Bush (Jr) and Laura Bush.
Picture taken with Colin Powell in 2001 -- seen him several times since.
Met Paul O'Neill, Bono and Chris Tucker in 2002.
Met Daryn Kagan (CNN) in 2002.
President Bush (Sr) and Barbara Bush in Rome in 1991.
President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea in Naples, Italy in 1994.
Met heads of state from other countries (Museveni, Eyadema)
There' s some more but I can't think of them right now.
i remember when they would discourage kids from taking colors or coloring books to the meetings.
so i thought ok, i will give my kid a pen and my book of bible stories to keep him busy.
then they said that was a bad idea because he might write on the furniture and it wasnt good to teach them to write on the wbt publications.
personally, as a kid, I got spanked at probably every single meeting. Dad would take me out and just whack me good. Really made me love god and the troof. I hated Wednesday's because I'd get home at 10:00 p.m. and would be dead tired. I also hated the bookstudy, which was held at our home, because it was during Alf. My parents, though, were very kind. They'd tape it for us, and after the bookstudy, we'd make popcorn and the whole bookstudy group would sit around and watch TV and eat popcorn.
