owyergoin?
how's the weekend for you?.
mrs ozzie and i have been enjoying being out for a drive in the highlands in the bright spring sunshine.
#1 My JW husband. But he won't talk with me anymore about my doubts.
#2 My non-JW family. But they don't understand why I couldn't just leave the religion. I explained the best I could, but they still don't get it.
My daughter was brought up in the lie, but she doesn't want to talk about my doubts either. She claims that she is over it. (I hope so)
#6 So no-one pretty much sums it up for me right now.
Hapgood
were you ever marked as bad association by a particular person or family in the congregation?
did you ever find out the reasons for being bad association?
Oh yes, I was a Bad ASSociation!
Low meeting attendance, I was irregular in field service, didn't comment at meetings, dropped out of the school. But I did clean the kingdom hall.
I felt bad for my hubby and daughter, my being marked affected them too. My daughter was left out of alot of things because of me. I blamed myself when my daughter left the jw religion. I was unable to perform like I was suppose to, I felt so guilty all the time.
Even though I believed it was the "truth", I just couldn't keep up with the JW expectations, no matter how hard I tried, it was such an ordeal for me to get to the meetings and out in field service. Because I was marked, I felt bad about myself, I have a low self-esteem anyway, but during my low points in the borg, I hit bottom.
I feel much better now :-), I'm actually proud of my Bad ASSociation title.
Hapgood
when i was a witness i knew of many who would either celebrate certain holidays in secret or make up for them some other way.
such as, family day ( christmas ) costume parties ( halloween ), i even knew several who made it a point to go see the fireworks on the 4th of july.
my mother told a wife of an elder that she always felt weird on mother's day for not sending a card to her mom, because her mom expected one.
My hubby, daughter and myself would get pretty lonely around holiday time. The congregation that we are in, pretty much everyone was related to everyone else (gotta watch who you marry), and they would all get together. So, most of times we were left out.
So, my family being "worldly" would celebrate all those pagan holidays, and of course we would go over to visit, you know just because we had the day off :-)
For Birthdays, we would just leave the room when it came to singing "Happy Birthday" , then come back and eat some cake.
Christmas we would arrive after they all unwrapped their gifts, would drink egg nog the whole bit, we did everything but the gifts. I loved driving around looking at all the decorations and lights. Watched the Christmas movies.
Went to 4th of July fireworks, had barbeque's. Always had Thanksgiving dinner with my family.
I was pretty lenient with my daughter in school, I let her sing the winter songs. With art projects in school, I said if something is "real" you can participate. For example if the teacher gave her a bunny or a Christmas tree, pumpkin, she could color it like it occurred in nature, but no Santa Clause. Her kindergarten class was featured in the local newspaper for their Thanksgiving celebration. So on the front page of the paper was a picture of my daughter participating in the celebration. There she was dressed up in a Thanksgiving costume that she had made in school, sitting at a table that the kids had decorated with turkeys and pumpkins, with their "feast" in front of them. Oops! None of the jws ever said anything to me about that.
I guess not growing up in the "truth", I really didn't understand the big deal the jws made concerning holidays.
Hapgood
thanks to little toe's piquing my interest on this subject, i hafta ask it...... .
has anyone here had any personal spiritual experiences and is anyone here brave enough to describe/relate any personal spiritual experiences they've had, whether pre-borg, during being borganized or post-borg?
to be more specific, have you ever seen any angels or spirit creatures, been made aware of their presence in any way, interacted with or communicated with them, or had dream/visions...etc?
Frannie, what an interesting thread.
I enjoyed reading all of your interesting experiences.
While in the Borg, I had a closed mind of this phenomenon , if anyone had a spiritual or an ESP experience, I would blame it on Satan, and tell them that (my Mom had several). But since leaving the jws, like everything else, I have re-elevated this.
I haven't had an ESP or spiritual experience thats been real profound. But I have had what is called Deja-vu, like this is real familiar. Or knowing that something is going to happen before it does, nothing big though, just small things. Or just a feeling about a certain situation, like vibes, both good and bad. My Mom claims that my Grandmother was clairvoyant, I wonder if that is inherited. Anyway, I am now open to the possibility that this is very real, and not caused by demons.
I feel that there is a fine division between the spiritual world and the physical.
Hapgood
i just had a really bad day at work.
apart from what you'd normally expect from a 15 hr shift, tonight vitually everything that could go wrong did.
when i got home i decided to have a drink(the first since emans barbie!!!
Gopher I loved those frosted glasses of A & W rootbeer. I agree, they tasted the best at those drive-ins (ours had car-hops). Nothing better on a hot summer evening.
But as an adult, coffee, white wine, beer, margaritas with Mexican food.
Hapgood
i recently 'stumbled' on an old wt magazine from 1979. it's been ages since i've seen an old 2 color copy of this magazine.. it just happened to be their centennial issue, the july 1st edition.. the cover title is.... 1879 - 1979. keeping watch for 100 years.
any of you old timers remember it?
anyway, here's some info.... .
garybuss, isn't that the truth! I remember going to some special day assembly that was held in Pittsburgh, PA at the hockey arena to celebrate this blessed event. Anyway, the local news reported it as the Watchtower celebrating its 100th year birthday. Boy were the local witnesses ticked off. "Like no, we don't celebrate Birthdays, it's really an anniversary".
Hapgood
owyergoin?
today's been a blowy day on the east coast of oz.
here's tonight's news report from associated press:.
#5 Too many.
For the three publishers in our family, we didn't pick up alot of magazines ( a really thin stack of them). But we always ended up with left-overs somehow. When they started to stack up at the bottom of the closet we used to leave them at not-at-homes, laundry mats, hospitals, wherever we could just drop them off and run. Some of them were real old, too. If that didn't work I just threw them out. I think the magazines must multiply when your not looking.
Hapgood
hiya everyone!!!
as we told you in our short intro, we decided that we had enough proof?
evidence?
Thanks for sharing your story with us. I'm so happy for you that it went so well, you are great parents. It's amazing how perceptive kids are, aren't they. I love to hear when the whole family leaves together, it will make you much closer. Plus you have each other for much needed support.
I'll keep you in my prayers when you tell your parents.
I have a story I'd like to share with you when my daughter was 3 years old (that was 20 years ago), she was very insightful for her age. My Mom (not a jw) babysat my daughter for me while I worked full time. My "wordly" Mom did this out of love, I couldn't afford to pay for daycare at the time, and she did this for free. My daughter blurted out to my Mom "Grandma you are BAD because you don't go to the Kingdom Hall." I guess my 3 year old was actually paying attention to the ugly teachings at the Kingdom Hall. This devastated my Mom, she was so hurt, she didn't tell me (she told me later that she was afraid of losing me), but she told my Dad.
My Dad was livid (non jw), so he confronted my hubby and asked him "what is that (expletive) religion teaching, that a 3 year old would tell her Grandma that she is bad?" Well, my hubby tried to explain it to my Dad in that gobblygook JW language that all JWS seem to master, "no, that is not what we teach, blah blah blah." While in my head I'm thinking "yeah, that's exactly what we teach, but we just don't state it as clearly as a child." JWS sugar coat all of the crap so it isn't so hard to swallow. Actually, that was the first time I actually got to thinking that something wasn't quite right. Out of the mouth of babes!
My daughter left the JWS when she was 18 (she saw threw the whole sham, never baptized), then because of her leaving and the way she was treated, I looked into the JW religion and left also. My hubby is still a JW.
Hapgood
my wife and i are new to this forum, and really, we're now new to life as well.
or rather, life is new to us, normal life that is.
i don't want to turn this into a novel (at least, not yet).
Welcome, Brandon and Stephanie Bartlett!!
How wonderful that both you and your wife saw the truth about the "truth" at the same time and came out together.
Hapgood
just figured i would say hi and all that good stuff.
for any of you keeping up on kitties posts about that 17 year old boy, thats me.
i have decided to stick it out...but i am looking for some friends in the oregon area..around portlandish?
Welcome, Blaid!!
Hapgood
