Posts by Fleur

i love the simpsons episode from early on when marge is singing it to maggie and poor maggie is imagining it happening to her. makes the point very well!

it's scary enough to be so little and the world so big kids don't need any help with being scared!

though it's funny, stuff that would have scared me to death at her age don't even phase my kid...

14

When I Am an Old Woman

by Tatiana in

jw
friends

i shall wear purple... .

with a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

and i shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves.

Fleur

hey tatiana,

i say, why the hell wait? i'm going to do it all now :D

i think of you often, i hope you've been doing well!

hugs

fleur

(but you may remember me as essie)

13

hey everybody! i'm not a christian anymore and i'm so happy about that lol

by Fleur in

okay, this is interesting to me.. first a little bit of background on me, i was introduced to jw-ism as a zygote, raised in and baptized at the tender age of 12. i got baptized because my beloved grandfather had just passed away and i was told that if i wasn't baptized i wouldn't get to the new order and i wouldn't ever see him again.

no pressure or anything.... i really truly believed everything for the first two decades of my life.

really started doubting at 25, left at 26 (they df'd me even though i disassociated myself in a letter to the elders first).

Fleur

thanks sassy...i'm not really a newbie around here, lost all my old email accounts and passwords and such from when i used to post here before. i used to go by the name esmeralda, most people just called me essie. but i appreciate your kindness just the same!

hi there left_field! yes, it did feel like a regime, didn't it? i want to hold onto this feeling of freedom so bad, that's why i had to post about it. thanks for reading!!!

fleur

13

hey everybody! i'm not a christian anymore and i'm so happy about that lol

by Fleur in

okay, this is interesting to me.. first a little bit of background on me, i was introduced to jw-ism as a zygote, raised in and baptized at the tender age of 12. i got baptized because my beloved grandfather had just passed away and i was told that if i wasn't baptized i wouldn't get to the new order and i wouldn't ever see him again.

no pressure or anything.... i really truly believed everything for the first two decades of my life.

really started doubting at 25, left at 26 (they df'd me even though i disassociated myself in a letter to the elders first).

Fleur

okay, this is interesting to me.

first a little bit of background on me, i was introduced to jw-ism as a zygote, raised in and baptized at the tender age of 12. i got baptized because my beloved grandfather had just passed away and i was told that if i wasn't baptized i wouldn't get to the new order and i wouldn't ever see him again. no pressure or anything...

i really truly believed everything for the first two decades of my life. really started doubting at 25, left at 26 (they df'd me even though i disassociated myself in a letter to the elders first). i've been df'd for almost six years. much to my family's shagrin, i have no intention of trying to get reinstated. they wouldn't reinstate me anyway when i told them that i thought that the organization was a cult.

i have known for a long time that i was agnostic, i just don't know if god or anything like a god is out there, and frankly, i really don't care anymore. but i have never, ever really grasped the simple thought that i'm not a christian anymore, until i said it in a reply to another thread just now. the thought made me so giddily happy that i just had to shout it out to everyone.

so hey everybody! lol i'm not christian, and i'm so glad!!!

don't get me wrong, there are a lot of christians out there who are humble, kind people and i am happy to count them among my friends. but the breed who are self righteous, pious, and preach damnation to everyone who isn't like them, man, i just don't want any of it. if that's what i have to be saved, i'd rather be unsaved, thanks.

what a relief to know its finally gotten through to me, i've finally escaped the bonds of my childhood indoctrination.

i'm not christian, i'm free, and the world somehow looks like a much more beautiful place because of that today.

just thinking out loud here. anyone else wake up one day and realize that not only were they wanting to be free, but they really were???

fleur

127

Do you still preach?

by Theocrat in

jw
friends

many here are not jehovah's witnesses anymore because of one reason or another, but do you still preach?

do you still think that it is important for a christian to preach?

just wondering.

Fleur

yeah, good question. i have to wonder if he's counting the time...

no, i don't preach, i hated doing it even when i was a jw. and anyone who tries to preach to me finds the conversation ends very quickly.

and no, i do not consider myself 'christian', in case you were wondering.

fleur

7

Disturbing Childrens Stories Like Rumplestiltskin

by dh in

jw
friends

as he was dancing, he sang:

today i brew, tomorrow i bake,.

and after that the child i?ll take.. i?m the winner of the game,.

Fleur

hell yeah, there are a lot of them. what about hansel and gretyl? i remember a raggedy ann book my sister got when we were little that had something about somebody who wanted to eat children's faces *ack!*

the original little mermaid fairy tale, ariel commits suicide in the end. no wonder disney monkeyed with the story lol.

scary stuff. some of those writers were sick puppies.

51

An honest estimate of ourselves.... (long)

by Theocrat in

jw
friends

god says: ?blessed is the able-bodied man who puts his trust in jehovah, and whose confidence jehovah has become.?

a governing body that made decisions based on the scriptures and blessed by jehovah!

now, he is once again serving as a christian elder.

Fleur

theo, i didn't read quite all of the responses here so if i'm repeating anyone , my apologies.

you said:

: No matter what each of our backgrounds may be, we still MUST realize that God?s kingdom as the only hope for mankind.

this remark just made my mouth fall open. we 'must' believe nothing of the sort. must, along with never and always are absolutes that i try not to use in my vocabulary. give me concrete, provable reasons without using the WT or any other JW rhetoric why exactly we MUST believe anything. I bet you can't.

other than the fact we must believe in gravity cause if we jump out of a plane without a chute we'll die, i don't think there are many things we must believe in. even then, i suppose we could deny it, but the proof will be in the result. where are the results that the society promised my great grandparents? grandparents? parents? my family is going on the fifth generation who believed the lies, and the first three are now old, bitter, and sad, or dead.

i want better than that for my child. i don't want her to waste her life waiting for the fairytale to come and save her. at least at the end of her life she would be able to say she had actually lived.

i guess i don't fit the profile of your vision of the 'freedom' that people live after leaving the org.

i don't smoke, never have. by choice. i don't drink, because my family has a bad history with alcohol and i choose not to deal with the substance at all. again, my choice.

i don't sleep around, nor would i have if i'd been 'free' as a teenager. it's not my way.

i celebrate christmas because i want to have the memories of it with my child. my family doesn't celebrate it, in fact they hate that i do. my hubby's family is all out of state so there is no pressure to 'conform'. a lot of my friends don't celebrate it because they have their own faiths/customs, that is fine by me.

i am an agnostic, married to one man, a law abiding citizen. in fact, if you met me on the street you could even mistake me at times for a jw, a jw i hadn't seen in years that i ran into recently had no idea i was 'out'.

so where do i fit in your grand scheme of things? i'm happy without the burdens that the organization put on me, i won't let them put those same burdens on my child. i don't believe that a loving god if there were one would murder the vast majority of the population, when many people are sincerely trying to serve him in their own way.

if i don't live up to your standards, well, i can live with that. i AM better off out, because if i'd stayed in, i would have killed myself long ago.

course, i suppose you'd say at least then i'd be in line for a resurrection.

if your motives were sincere in posting this here, then you're sincerely misguided. if you were trying to provoke people, then i think you should investigate other hobbies.

fleur

51

An honest estimate of ourselves.... (long)

by Theocrat in

jw
friends

god says: ?blessed is the able-bodied man who puts his trust in jehovah, and whose confidence jehovah has become.?

a governing body that made decisions based on the scriptures and blessed by jehovah!

now, he is once again serving as a christian elder.

Fleur

oops, premature posting there lol. another post is down the thread.

32

Love

by Celtic in

jw
friends

what can you write from the heart about love?

Fleur

well, this much i can tell you. love is something that i never truly felt, understood, or was able to give completely until i could see a way out of the organization, and be my true self.

true love (so called 'romantic love') is having your mate reach over and take your hand, and stand by you when you are told that you will not have a healthy future. and still loving you with their whole heart when those predictions are proven true.

true love is not only knowing that the other person will be there in the morning when you wake up, and come home to you at night, it's spending the inbetween time looking forward to their return, and feeling joy when you hear their key in the door.

(seven years in love with this man and nearly five years of marriage, and the sound of his keys in the door still gives me butterflies. unlike my first husband, when i heard his keys in the door, i felt very ill.)

will think about this some more, such a seemingly simple topic, but so hard to define in words.

fleur