This would be my 12 year old and use #359 for balloons.
Posts by merfi
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March 15, 2006 - Imbecility Perfected
by daniel-p in"choosing a type of work that promotes what is directly condemned in the bible is definitey wrong.
so true christians do not accept jobs that may involve idolatry, stealing, [etc]...." - g06 3/15 p.24 pa.11 .
"what if the work itself does not specifically violate any divine requirement?
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Death of a laptop
by DigitalFokus inwell, i went ahead and killed my laptop.
unfortunatly i didn't use a shotgun or a assault rifle, i used a .45 automatic pistoli .
its not as dramtic as i had hoped but its still felt really good killing that thing.
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What do you do now with all that extra time?
by beautifulisfree ini was just wondering what everyone does with their extra time??
the meetings took up so much time in our lives.
for me its soo fun to sleep late on sat (no service!
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merfi
Right now it's about 8:15 on a Thursday night. Probably about song time, I'm guessing, although our meetings always go overtime. Hate that.
So, with my free time tonight, I have waxed my eyebrows and am just about to rinse out some highlights. I enjoy more fluff time, I guess.
Saturday mornings I sleep in -- heavenly.
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March 15, 2006 - Imbecility Perfected
by daniel-p in"choosing a type of work that promotes what is directly condemned in the bible is definitey wrong.
so true christians do not accept jobs that may involve idolatry, stealing, [etc]...." - g06 3/15 p.24 pa.11 .
"what if the work itself does not specifically violate any divine requirement?
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merfi
Hmm, I'm a lab tech, so I guess I'm in deep trouble. I've done many many crossmatches in the past 15+ years...
Remarkably, I haven't been approached about my choice of career, despite it being primarily about blood. And actually, the blood issue was what started me questioning things about 6 or so years ago. I found the ajwrb (?? or something like that) site and spent hours on it. That, combined with what I already knew and know about blood components made me write up a notarized card that I carried alongside my blood card (which was for show, you know how when ya show pix of your kids out in service... there's that blood card...). The notarized card said something to the effect of negating the blood card. I have a copy in my chart at the doc's office, as well. BUT -- moot point as my blood card went into the shredder today. Yesss...
Ramble ramble.
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Still going to meetings??....
by LivingInReality ingood day..... i am very interested in hearing from anyone who is on this board that is still going to meetings.
i was wondering.... .
since you find yourself on this board with countless people who have left and are telling their personal stories, not to mention exposing that organization for the brainwashing cult that it truly is.... is this helping you to leave and make the final departure?.
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merfi
Hi Shannon,
To this day I will always believe that they ask as many questions as they do so they can go home and whack off to the fantasies that they wish they could be participating in. And how uncomfortable to put women in that position to tell three men what they are doing in bed, or how many times etc. etc.
I totally agree with you on this one... I've been in two JC where I've felt like this. When I told them "in the garage..." their pens went down and their eyes bugged. I think they all went home that night to their wives and said "hey baby, let's go out to the garage...." Anyway, yeah, buncha pervs, I think.
And to your question...
I go when the kids are home (they're 8, 9 and 12) for now (every other weekend w/ their JW dad). I just DA'd about three weeks ago and haven't been to a meeting since. So far we've had kid conferences on meeting night (darn!), someone has been sick, little guy cut his eye on the radiator so we opted for the ER vs the KH that day. Anyway... they're gone this week for spring break, so I'm on break from meetings still. I really haven't decided how I'm going to handle all this when they get home. First opportunity will be this coming Tues BS. My eldest is 'into' it, yet a very intelligent girl, so I'm trying to figure out the angles to work on her to plant some seeds...So like many here, my reason is "family"...
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Oh, you Brits !!!!
by JH inhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4831180.stm
nation's knicker secrets revealed .
one in 10 people wear their underwear for three days in a row, a peep into the nation's smalls has revealed.
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Attitudes of JCs
by rhian ini just finished reading crisis of conscience.
i had read half of it but never finished; something i read on this forum prompted me to pick it up & finish it.. my question is this: i'm curious, for those who have had experience with judicial committees, what has been the prevailing attitude?
franz wrote about the lack of brotherly love in both the committees at hq in ny and in the cong in alabama.. i've had two experiences; won't go into the details for the sake of brevity.
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merfi
I think it might depend on the elders... My two JC meetings were horrible. Just horrible. They SAY they wanted to help and restore me, but their attitudes and demeanors were not in the least kind and merciful. It was totally like being on trial, but in a kangaroo court where they assumed guilt until proven innocent. Which was going to be futile anyway, as I was prejudged. I told friends later that I'd have felt more at ease in front of Jehovah himself than those elders. Two of them had personal issues with me and the third (in my last and final JC) said maybe four sentences the whole 4 hours. When he started to say "what you need to do..." I thought all RIGHT!! Finally, here comes something positive as the other two had done nothing but beat me down with how bad I was. Nope, the rest of that sentence was "... stop saying 'screwed up'. You're actually saying the 'f word'." o....k.... WTH ever.
The classic comment from my JC was from the PO. He told me that if I was in Israel times, I "would be dead." This was at the end of the meeting where I was already completely crumbled in a ball of worthlessness and sadness. Nice, brother. Nice. I wrote my DA letter over the next two days after that JC...
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Another Newbie :)
by merfi init's hard to know where to begin, so i'll just... begin.. i had my first encounter with jw in high school when my now ex-husband moved into our small town.
(you're doing the math already, aren't ya?
:) ) after finding out he was a jw, i did a little bit of reading into it, which he discouraged... told me that that stuff is "apostate" (i had no idea what that meant) and that he'd give me stuff to read.
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merfi
Sorry for the length of that intro post, but glad you guys made it through. I'm not even going to tell you that it is not normal, because it is. My other online board (parents of July 97 kids) gives me a bad time about my novels...
I found this board by doing a google for x-jw and variations of that. This one kept popping up, and I noticed that the posting was pretty lively compared to other places I checked out. I've been reading for hours today (going to make for a looonnng blurry night of work tonight!). It feels pretty darn good to find myself among kindreds. You guys aren't the demon-possessed, angry and hateful mob that JWs teach that you (and now "we" wooo hooo!) are. I think there is more love and support outside the org than in. At least, that's what I've found in the years I've been fighting with the elders for my dignity. My "worldly" friends and family were all there for me during the divorce BS moreso than my congregation 'friends'.
I do sort of miss a couple people in my old cong, but when I think of the friends I had there, I know that they aren't/weren't true friends. I could never be myself around any of them for fear of being thought of as 'spiritually weak' for any little dumb thing. I'm a very non-judgemental person; it was hard to be so judged... I never quite fit their 'mold' and I think they never quite understood that. I think it threatened them somewhat, too. The elders have problems with independent, non-submissive, fix-my-own-damn-washing machine before I settle in with a Coors Light and a football game females. I just read Scully's post about the Elder spotting -- fits to a T and I can't wait to have the opportunity to imitate it. It's true that when their power is taken away even in our own minds, they are nothing... they no longer have any hold on me. Just regular humans.
I think there's going to be a few more of these ramblings before I get this all out.
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Another Newbie :)
by merfi init's hard to know where to begin, so i'll just... begin.. i had my first encounter with jw in high school when my now ex-husband moved into our small town.
(you're doing the math already, aren't ya?
:) ) after finding out he was a jw, i did a little bit of reading into it, which he discouraged... told me that that stuff is "apostate" (i had no idea what that meant) and that he'd give me stuff to read.
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merfi
It's hard to know where to begin, so I'll just... begin.
I had my first encounter with JW in high school when my now ex-husband moved into our small town. (you're doing the math already, aren't ya?
) After finding out he was a JW, I did a little bit of reading into it, which he discouraged... told me that that stuff is "apostate" (I had NO idea what that meant) and that he'd give me stuff to read. So he did. He shouldn't have fallen for me, being a wordly girl and all, but he did. Sometimes my past 15 years in JW-land sneaks in and tells me that had we had an "honorable" start, we may still be together. Then the free side of me smacks it down. Anyway.. I went off to college, started studying and was baptized in '89. I think my very beginnings in the "truth" were divided -- I knew that if I was to have him, I'd have to have the religion. But I kinda liked and believed it, too. We married in '90, were re-baptized in '91 because our first one didn't "count" since we'd been fornicatin' before and after our first baptism. I think they even called NY on that one.Three kids, two moves later he cheats on me. I kick his ass out in Feb '03 because no way am I going to take his crap, nor let the kids see me as an example of being walked all over in the name of being "submissive".
To back up a little bit -- it gets a little hairy here -- he'd started his little affair in '01 or so, and in spring '02 put his ring down and said he was done. I had a pretty rough summer -- lost about 25#, watched out the window countless nights in hopes that he'd come home, tried to keep it all together for the kids, kept going to meetings. But I was dying inside. Enter a somewhat younger Witness who had just had three years of craziness and was coming back to our town to heal, reform, whatever. Right person, right time... we fell and fell quite hard. He filled the loneliness and blinded me to the 'wrong' of it. We blinded one another. Eventually, my "conscience" got to me (after the almost-ex found an email I'd written to another worldly friend about 'rugburns' LOL) and we went to the elders. But, we kinda lied and said that "it" had only happened once.... Little public reproof, done. To save time here -- fast forward to Sept/Oct '03. Another, I thought, REAL attack of conscience and I confessed everything to the elders. I had ended the affair and was counting on some mercy. Nope. DF announcement. For both of us. Now I realize the congregation is made up of janitors and window-washers, but it didn't take a 4-year degree to figure out what went down when they read both our announcements the same night....
After the announcement, I was just plain lost.
I wanted back soooo bad. I wrote my first RI letter three months later, met with the elders and was told that my skirts had too-high slits, and to prove that, would I please lift it to where the slit ends. "That, Rachel, is how long your dress ACTUALLY is." They also berated me on my choice of vehicle -- a jeep. My freedom, my other child. And at the time, all I had and could afford as I was in the middle of a divorce and bankruptcy. But no, it isn't "practical". Now, nevermind that the affair was rekindled... Yes, I wanted 'back', BUT I knew I was being such a hypocrite. That ate at me, but I tried to shove it away. And did successfully as they eventually reinstated me -- Oct '04. During all of this (and actually during the very first meeting where we were just reproved) I started questioning a little bit about this holy spirit, Jehovah's decision blah blah in these meetings. I thought -- if I was reinstated, how could it have anything to do with holy spirit as I was still in the affair and not truly 'worthy' of reinstatement. If no holy spirit, then does Jehovah have anything to do with any of this...? I know the answer a JW would give and that's that the elders can only go with what they're told, to make decisions. But then, I argue, aren't their decisions based on having asked for that holy spirit to be there...? And what's done on earth has already been decided in heaven? Or some such blather. Doesn't matter at this point, anyway. The affair continued for awhile until I started up with another guy... So by now, you're no doubt thinking that I'm just all bad. That's what I was thinking, too.... So I just gave in, figured I was pretty worthless anyway, and to just go for the enjoyment of having a companion, a friend, someone to sleep in with... This stuff that has happened the past three years is NOTHING like I was through my growing ups, through college, through my marriage. I think a divorce and the events that lead up to it can really do a number on thinking, morals, ethics... and that's what happened to me.
Sorry -- I wander around a lot...
Throughout these past three years, my elders have been constantly bugging me about any little thing that they could. Again -- my clothing, which they finally confessed to saying that if it was on someone else (he meant 'large') it would be disgusting. So I believe that their issues with me were really their OWN issues.... Quit lookin, brothers, avert your eyes... They picked on me about my jeep, my job (I'm a 4-year degree holder *gasp*), the fact that my oldest daughter stayed overnight with her wordly best friend. There was always something.
But I sucked it up, wanting to be in Jah's organization, the Truth. Until.... Just this past month, I called up the PO and gave the short version of the past two years. The years that included my DF and RI.Cut to the judicial hearing just under a month ago. Again, though I KNEW everything that I had done was soooo wrong and reproachable, I had stopped it all. I had 'turned around'. I felt like David in Ps 51. I sincerely believed my repentence. I believed they would as well. Ohhhh no. I had a fricking FOUR HOUR JC hearing that even then, didn't end with a decision. They felt that my case was so complicated that they'd have to bring in a fourth elder, call the CO and maybe Bethel. Holy crap. I know they wanted to DF me -- I figured I was probably a foregone conclusion, retrospectively, they just needed to gather more brothers to be on their 'side'. I thought "oh, I can just appeal..." But then realized that I'd have to tell my whole damn story AGAIN. At this point, I was completely drained. My heart had been knifed into and twisted and squeezed until there was nothing left of it. I hadn't cried for nearly two years -- big walls. The bastards broke it down and I couldn't breathe for my bawling. I was so frustrated that they couldn't see the good person underneath, the person that just wanted healed and was seeking their help. They countered my feelings of repentence and sincerity with "well you must not be because...." numerous times. They sent me out twice to discuss, so I listened. Words like "deceptive", "rescind reinstatement" etc came through the door. Like I said, I feel that they had made their decision to DF me the day I called the PO to "do the right thing" and confess everything.
24 hours later, after having somewhat come out of the fog, I made my own decision. No longer could I be a part of this THING that beats its lost sheep to within an inch of its mental and emotional life. It wasn't worth going through an appeal. I didn't care anymore. Trying to please the elders, trying to convince them - I was done. Maybe all this was underneath all the time and it took them stripping me down to finally reveal it within myself. This was bullshit. This wasn't "love", this wasn't even remotely "Christian". I spent the next two days writing notes to myself, then compiling it into a three-page letter that ended with "disassociate myself....". They attempted to call me the Tuesday after my Sat JC, but I dodged them. If it was to tell me their 'decision', I'll never know. I gave them the letter the Thurs. Sunday, one of the elders came up to me and asked if they could talk to me after the meeting. I said "probably not". (I'm tellin you, the expression on his face was absolutely priceless -- that alone makes all this worth it LOL). He said "probably not, huh?" I said, "right." and walked off.... score one for me.
We (kids and I) didn't go to meeting until that next Thurs -- my little guy had #2 and we left right after that. That night they read my announcement. Apparently, it's CHANGED now?! They don't say DA or DF, they just say "is no longer one of JW." I've corrected in as many ways as I can those who may think it's a DF. Some knew I was talking with the elders in a JC, some knew I'd written a DA letter. I haven't been back to a meeting since that night (Mar 9th), so I'm not really sure what's going on.
I also sent my DA letter to the CO, along with yet another one directed to him about the elders here and how horrid they've treated me. His visit is in early May, so we'll see if anything happens or not. If not, at least I have my own peace.
It has been a horrible journey "out", but as I sit in peace, finally, it has been worth it. I can think for myself, I don't have the 'guilt' of "what will so and so think", I don't have to worry about my msn music display showing Rob Zombie when the elder's wife signs on (why she hasn't blocked me yet, I dunno). There are just too many things that I feel that I'm unable to put into words.
Retrospectively, I don't think I ever truly HAD the "truth" -- I started out doing it for a person, I ended because of people, I was always in fear of disappointing or being found out by others. Some may say I never 'knew' Jehovah as I was supposed to. I'd say, probably not. But, if there is a Jehovah, it isn't in that organization of men and their man-made rules (so much like the Pharisees they scoff at) and I'm done looking there. I'm just done looking, period. I'm in a rather cynical, questioning, wondering phase. People have said "oh, you can celebrate Xmas now!" or "what church will you go to now?". Frankly, I'm done with ANY sort of religion... anything that TELLS me what to believe gives me hives. I just got my mind and heart back, I'd like to keep it that way.
The kids are my only worry right now. Their dad and his family are all JW. My oldest (12) is an unbaptized publisher and pretty gung-ho for it all. The other two (9 and 8 yo) are more of the roll with it type. They're pretty happy to hang out and watch Sponge Bob instead of go to meeting.
So not sure what is going to happen there yet.So, that is my story. I feel like a butterfly that just came out of the coccoon. I'm not really sure of who I am right now, but know who I'm not.
Thanks for letting me write here and join. Sorry about your cold coffee or warm beer after reading all the way thru this.
Rachel