Thanks guys for all the nice things you've said. I'm glad I made this post now, wasn't sure if it was all that noteworthy.
There was so much more that was said in between the few lines that I shared in my first post but I didn't want to ramble (plus I'm kinda lazy when it comes to typing it all out ).
I approached them as someone who wasn't militant toward them (which I'm not) but as someone who is sad about how things turned out in terms of his own career as a JW, but who is still curious about how things are going with the Organization and with the people I centered my entire life upon (which I am). They were very unguarded and it was quite apparent they too were struggling with certain aspects of being a Witness that just don't add up. To me they seemed solid enough in their own resolve that they were able to take a look someone elses experience without it rattling them.
They knew about Beth Sarim and we chuckeled about how it was actually deeded to the Biblical worthies. There was a lot of eye rolling on the part of the Sister. I told them that I visited Beth Sarim a few months back and it was scary to me that I didn't even know about that whole nonsense until after I was "out".
Me :I wondered if I would have taken it as seriously as I did, had I known how goofy the thinking was on the part of the founders of the religion .
Them: Made noises like they agreed but didn't know what to say really and sort of gazed off into the middle distance.
Me: I suffered from terrible anxiety in the last few years of being a Witness. (They seemed to perk up a little at this revelation and I got the sense that they knew more about this than the average person)I finally went to a Counselor who was baffled by the free floating nature of my symptoms. I have an awesome wife, 2 great boys, a good job, no financial worries and yet I was plagued by sudden waves of almost debilitating panic and anxiety for no apparent reason. I was hesitant to reveal the JW side of my life to the counselor of course ,for fear of bringing reproach on the Organization and wanting to avoid entertaining worldly ideas... ya know how that goes ??
Them: They chuckled knowingly and said, "You do have to be careful though"
Me: I know but after a time I felt confident enough and revealed the JW side of my life story and suddenly it all made sense to him. He said that teaching children that God is going to destroy the world any moment, including your Dad, was a terrible form of child abuse. He said children develop all sorts of disorders when they haven't yet developed any real coping mechanisims to deal with frightening circumstances beyond their control. Many times these disorders don't show up until years later and are triggered by a stessful event. He said my anxiety, to some degree, mirrored that of some of his patients who grew up in alcoholic homes or were victims of violence. It's often easier to cope with someone who is being mean to you, than it is when someone, out of kindness or concern, is teaching you fearful things. He felt that my subconscious recognized the source of the anxiety (tribulation talk at the meetings & assemblies, AWAKE magazines with terrible photos on the covers) but my conscious mind, was not ready to recognise it.
I could see the logic but dismissed a lot of it becaues I figured it could be just Satan trying to pull me out of the truth.
Them: (him) Well he does use all sorts of avenues to get us to leave the truth...."The Truth..chuckle chuckle" you know what I mean.
Me: Ha ! those old JW phrases sound so funny now but yeah...that's what I thought too, but you know...about a week or so after that last Memorial I attended, I realized that I wasn't having any problem with this and I haven't since. In fact, some JW's from a neighboring Hall, stopped at my door about a year ago and the Sister kept saying that she thought I looked so good and so peaceful. She kept repeating this and said she seemed to remember that I was having a hard time with depression or something. I finally told her that it was anxiety that was the problem and she wasn't going to like to hear this but I left the Organization and it dissappeared almost overnight. Of course she gave me the spiel about the last days etc....LOL !
Them: Well....she was concerned....
Me: Yeahh I know... she's a sweetheart but it's frustrating when you can't get through the automatic responses they use to dismiss the possibility that you have a valid complaint.
Could you elaborate on your father in laws situation? Why did he need blood, and what former fraction that was forbidden then, would have enabled him to survive (or have a fighting chance at least), post 2000?
It was my own Father actually who died this way. He lived his life as a JW but wasn't allowed to be baptized because he was just too afraid of the door to door work. He tried and tried but he'd just freeze up and couldn't get beyond the driveway. When I was in elementary school we'd take him out with us and I'd end up going to the door while he stood in the driveway LOL ! Poor Dad, he finally stopped going to meetings because he felt like he was a lost cause and got tired of hearing about it.
in late 1997 he was about to retire and began studying again, thinking that he might be able to go in service if he didn't have to worry about running into people from work etc. Around that same time he found out he needed Bypass surgery. He signed the No Blood paperwork based on what he had learned from the Society about blood. Like most of us, he didn't know anything else about blood transfusions except for what he read in the Publications. His Dr. assured him that he wouldn't need blood and that he'd be up and walking around and back home in 3-4 days.
Long story short, a day or so after the surgery he began to weaken. It turned out that there was a leak in one of the grafts and his blood count was dangerously low. He slipped in and out of consciousness and it was too late for him to resend his medical directive on Blood. The Head Nurse turned out to be a JW, she said "Why on earth did he sign those papers...I sure wouldn't have if I wasn't baptized ." We were shocked that a JW in the medical profession would say this especially after all the Societies anti Blood hoopla and since it was too late to help our Dad.
His blood count went lower and lower despite using all the best blood building methods. At that time the Liason Committee wan't available to non JW's. at least that was our understanding. The family sat with him around the clock waiting and watching, hoping his blood count would rise. In the process, his system just gave out. Our otherwise healthy and young-for-his-age-Dad, walked in on his own two feet and never made it out.
All of his children and grandchildren who came in to see him that morning saw first hand what happens to someone who dies from lack of blood. It was very hard for us to reconcile with the "new light" that came out a short time later, that blood fractions were acceptable and use of them doesn't violate the "abstain from blood" commandment. How could that possibly be true? What about Dad....we could have given him parts of our own blood to expand his...heck...I'd have given him my blood straigh out of my arm if I could. I don't think Jehovah would hold it against me !
Had my Father heard about this, he'd have surely seen the ridiculousness of this reasoning and questioned the whole stand regarding the blood issue. He signed the No Blood Directive only because he was sure he wouldn't need it and it wouldn't come to the point where he'd actually need blood.
We were in a daze as you can imagine. The Witnesses were really nice of course....very kind words about his steadfast stand for Jehovah and how we'd be seeing him again soon in the New System. One of his long time friends (an elder) volunteered to give his Memorial talk but we had to hunt down a place to have it because they wouldn't let a non baptized person use the Hall for such a purpose. Dad would surely be in the New System they said but in This System,even though he had died for his sins, we couldn't use the Hall for his Memorial.
My Dad was a kind gentle generous and naturally good man who displayed more Christlike qualities than a good many of the Witnesses I've known over the years.
Anyway...Yesterday, I told those JW's, that all of the above experiences and others, on their own, one by one as they were happening, just seemed like isolated incidents that could be explained away using the usual JW rationalizations. But when I lay them all out like I'm doing now, I can't believe it took so long to wake up.
That's when they began telling me about their Disfellowshipped Son and ended up telling me, as they had also told him, to go and have a good life and let go of the past.
