Well. when it comes to certain issues, I will stand up and be counted. As an example: I recently lost a friendship of twenty years. She was my "soulmate" of friends. We had been best friends, really tight, for the whole of those twenty years. She was mostly the dominant one. I mostly aceded to her wishes because to fight with her was a waste of time and breath; and the issues that she had a conflict over I didn't care about. When she met me, I was a waste of human breath. I was getting over being in the JW's and had a severe depression. She stayed with me, helped me, nurtured me. I sincerely was useless. I couldn't even balance my own checkbook because I was so depressed. I lost all my "worldly: friends. WHen they realized how sick I was, they just bailed. Her, she tried to constantly help me, took me under her wing (even though she was younger than I was) and tried to make me see a different sort of life. WIth her help, I was able to make it through. We were both pregnant at the same time, and we had a boy and a girl within six weeks of each other. She was 18, I was 24.
Time passed and our lives led different paths, but we were always in contact with each other and took up the friendship like it was yesterday.
Recently, she started dating an XJW. She brought him to live in her home after five weeks, which I thought was impulsive. She was so desperate to get a man at that point she would have done anything. Come to find out, this XJW's x'wife dated my brother and was one of the reasons he was reproved when he was a teenager. My friend told her teenaged daughter that she didn't want her friends to know that they were "living together" because it would insult his family <whom haven't talked to him in six years> and that her friends would raise a living fuss. Her daughter, because she can'thandle her, is living in the Texas Baptist Children's home. She was home for a weekend. This man, who had only been living with my friend for one week, and dating her for five weeks, decided that HE would discipline this "juvenile delinquent" who lived with his girlfriend. My friend's daughter was at home for the first time in WEEKs, finds out that her mother is living with this freak boyfriend, and didn't even get the time to know his name before he is telling her what to do, how to do it, how long to do it, etc. Of COURSE she bucked his "heavenly design." When she rode with me in the truck to our New Year's Eve destination on a ranch, she was telling me how he'd ripped the cable out of her room so that she would come down to the family room and be a FAMILY with this XJW freak she only knew for one day. She said that he ordered her to do the dishes, and because she didn't jump, he dragged her up the stairs to the kitchen and gave her rug burns. I saw em! I asked her what did her Mother do, and she said nothing.
I was there on the ranch for 1 day, and I saw how he treated my friend and her daughter, and I was sickened. I left one day early. When I got home, I called Child Protective Services, the Texas Baptist CHildren's home.. and told what I saw. My friend called me on Jan 4 and I told her in no uncertain terms what her daughter had told me about that guy. She said it was NONE OF MY BUSINESS.. and hung up on me.. and said she had handed the discipline of her wayward daughter over to this creep. I asked her if she was "farked in the head"? How could you hand over discipline to a man that has only known your daughter for ONE weekend? I called back over ther and spoke to the girl, but it was purely by design that her Mother was coaching her on what to tell me. Her Mother told me that her daughter was making this stuff up to get them in trouble. I just finally called the police. They didn't do anything because they went over there and said that she wouldn't tell them anything.
So yes.. to answer yoiur question.. when it involves something I feel passionately about.. I speak up.
CG
