We were up in NC looking at our property over Labor Day Weekend. Visiting home builders, etc.
In a recent post I had noted that my wife was still doing some heavy chronology research in the Insight Volumes, and that I was a little worried she still had doubts. It turns out she was only confirming what she had already knew - the WT chronology is a pure sham. Out of the blue, on our drive to NC, she brought up a point about Evil-Merodach, how she could prove it was a sham just by using the Society's literature! Yes!
It appears that she has read a couple of apostate sites, but I haven't DIRECTLY asked because I am not sure if she is ready to tell me. She mentioned one time that she read a site online that talked about how Paul did not ever report to a body of older men ... speaking of the faithful slave claim.
One night we stayed up late talking in bed, we sort of touched on everything wrong with being a JW and how we would have to replace that social structure with a new one. Now that we have cleared alot of major JW hurdles, we can just sit and talk about how screwy things are being a JW. We talked about how we each had always kept non-JW's at arm's length - polite, but never anything beyond necessary association. We talked about how we really needed to work on changing that, and how hard it was going to be since we are trained to make up polite but lame excuses why we can't "make it" to that "worldly gathering".
We both agreed - that even though we will always have to deal with JW family members - we did not want to let being ex-JW's define us as people. We don't want to spend our lives PROVING to JWs that we can live a fulfilling life - even in spite of negativity and sickness or whatever may come upon us.
My wife mentioned how she was actually excited about the prospect of moving away and starting with a fairly clean slate. She talked about going to college and getting a degree in something she was excited about learning.
We talked about the subject of breaking the news to my mom - which I haven't really even given much thought to yet. My wife said my mom is the person she is most scared of telling this to. For those of you not familiar, my mom (who is actually a sweet person) is a pretty hardcore-JW. We decided that it was going to have to be a one-on-one with my mom in regards to me talking to her about not being a JW anymore. My mom is still really angry at my non-JW dad for never becoming a JW and many of the hurtful things said back and forth to each other as a result of that through the years. Basically my mom just needs to grow up - but she has used being a JW as an excuse to avoid it (in my opinion). My mom will view my not being a JW as a WIN for my dad.
It doesn't really bother me telling my mom about it. I am just posting this because it is interesting that my wife has appeared to turn the corner. Now it is a matter of moving past it. This is good news. I still would like her to read Crisis of Conscience, but I would like to save that for the doubts/"panic attacks" that will inevitably come up in the future.
-ithinkisee