i've been lurking for about 3 months now and thought i'd better finally sign up.
you have all been an immense help to me as i have come to realize that this isn't the truth so i want to say a great big thank you!
what a crazy, emotional ride it is to finally face the truth about the doubts that i have carried for many years.
Phizzy you and I are in exactly! the same boat, and we have the same mental attitude too.
Thats the way I left, I lost my family tho not formally, they know I'm a danger, but I can NOT tolerate that which is false and the price for staying was too high. I miss my family so much, but freedom is worth it. My husband followed me out but was in mentally for a couple years.
It was really difficult, but truly, Give me liberty or give me death. Life is not worth living if you can't be free.
in most of the usa and canada april 10 is national sibling day.
the witnesses are all in a frenzie actually celebrating this in my area.
yet in a few months these same people will shun mother and father's day.
Hrm, I wonder what pagan god or goddess they can summon who was once worshipped and they were a sibling...Got to be one somewhere so they can spoil the fun. Can't have witnesses doing what 'the world' is doing!
lol @ Nicolau...that "spiritual brothers and sisters and their real blessings' sounds legit!
so many of us have been taught that the name of god is jehovah , if like me many have come to really appreciate god's name .. .
more accurately we , at least many or most love the name of jehovah , or more accurately should i say this pronunciation .
does god care what we call him , of course he does , he had his name written in the bible as yhwh ( best i can do on this computer ) , more than 6000 times .
about two years after i was baptized, i had this incident.
i looked at it as an isolated incident at the time, but now realize it would have had basically the same result with 99.99% of any jws not members here.. i will keep it short.
i was talking with a person who was raised in the religion.
I gave a party with another sister for our little girls. We both wanted a piñata but she was nervous about offending people. She ended up getting a piñata like castle with strings you pull, the special string when pulled opened the door that released the candy. Which was ok with people, as long as a stick wasn't involved! It just makes me reflect how silly it all was.
so, here's a bit of a different point of view.
while most of us will agree that our time within the jw cult was rather terrible, however, i'd like to look at another aspect.
did anything good come out of being in a cult and then waking up from it?.
I'll always wonder that too. I'm thinking, tho, that I would have still had kids, since I've been obsessed with babies all my life. Would have been nice to have been told to do my best in school tho, and that my parents supported me in my education. That doesn't matter so much when the world is ending, AND you are female and can't get anywhere in the org anyway. The very best you could ever hope for was to be a circuit overseers wife....oh goody!
one thing that did help me a bit, was all the bible page turning. I am faster in the bible than most people in my church. It was all of that going back and forth, back and forth, pulling scriptures from here and there to prove bizarre stuff.
just curious about others experience.
i've been living just a few miles from a kingdom hall for 9 years.
i've been called on 0 times.
But it's hard to act like that when you are as sweet a person as lisarose!
lisa how about a note saying you are an exJW, but if they would like to hear all about the true history of their cult, as well as how much happier you are since leaving their cult, you would be happy to tell them, and if that was the case, please knock!
so, here's a bit of a different point of view.
while most of us will agree that our time within the jw cult was rather terrible, however, i'd like to look at another aspect.
did anything good come out of being in a cult and then waking up from it?.
i'm going to be honest and from the heart when i say that for 40 years in the jw religion i was very happy in my ignorance!
man, what a trip it was.
i loved every minute of it but then i was absent the bad in my religion.
so, here's a bit of a different point of view.
while most of us will agree that our time within the jw cult was rather terrible, however, i'd like to look at another aspect.
did anything good come out of being in a cult and then waking up from it?.
I just enjoy everything so much now. Doing things I never could have done when I was in. Singing the national anthem, voting, watching the kids on their sports teams or fun activities, birthday parties, holidays, going to church (and not being forced to), celebrating the change of seasons, enjoying my time the way I want to, enjoying volunteer activities by choice, not feeling judged all the freaking time.
I think we don't take anything for granted, like people who have always had these things often do. We enjoy them to the full, knowing what it's like to be repressed and voiceless and forced to do stuff, and kept out of fun stuff.
so my mom who sadly is still in the "truth" asked me if i was going to the circuit assembly this sunday.
she knows i don't go to meetings anymore but usually when she would mention the assemblies i would say yes and go pretty much just for her sake.
however, this time i couldn't bring my self to saying yes, i've been reading "crisis of conscience" and i just can't bring my self to go anymore, even if it's for my mother.
