Friday night on the way home from work, my cell phone rang and I answered it without looking at the caller ID. It was my JW mother....I haven't talked with her in six months. She started the conversation "Hi Cabby do you know who this is?" Understand only immediate family calls me by that nickname (my brother couldn't say Carol so he called me Cabol...which was shortened to Cab over the years). After rolling up my windows and turning on the a/c we continued to talk while I drove home, 20 minutes later we were still talking.....as I pulled into the driveway and went into the house. Once I was in a settled, the sermon started......
She'd like to see me, she isn't well and worries that I've turned away from Jehovah and am receiving none of his Holy Spirit. We discussed my daughter's mental health problems (she has anger issues and feelings of being deserted) and I told my mother it was chemical and hormonal......my mother informed me it was "Demons", that my turning away from Jehovah was the cause of all my problems...financial, health, emotional, etc. After much lecturing on her part and her constant advising me to make myself right with Jehovah, I advised her that I was a peace with my standing before Jehovah and I didn't feel I had to go to the KH to worship Jehovah. That I believed the Bible and I believed in Jesus and Jehovah, but I did not believe in the organization or the governing body and did not feel that the elders had any right to sit in judgment of anyone or counsel anyone about their problems. I also informed her that I would see her in the new system if there was one, or in heaven or maybe I'd just be dead and so would she.
The old standard, "Jehovah is using men", "it is not the person, it is the message", etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum, followed! At that point I informed her I had no interest in belonging to an organization that would tell a female child that they didn't count because their father wasn't a JW (I was informed that the Circuit Overseer that said that suffered through 7 years on no positions for his cold treatment of the friends.....but Jehovah hadn't let me know this because I had left him); that preached the end in 1975 and have since changed their tunes; that belonged to the UN (oh, the sh*t hit the fan on that one, she wanted proof....I told her I'd e-mail it to her) and that I thought she should read Ray's book C of C (she knew Freddie and Ray Franz, Brother Knorr and a number of the "powers that be" at Bethel). At that she started screaming.....yes screaming.....that, that was my problem. I had joined "that religion Ray had started in Florida called the Apostates". When I informed her no I hadn't....she informed me I needed to throw out "that demonized book" and all of my problems and my daugher's problems would stop. She also informed me she was going to come down and help me clean out my house of anything "demonized". I informed her not to come in December because I was having a Christmas Tree.
To make a long story (or should I say conversation) short, the conversation lasted 3 hours and 38 minutes...on my cell phone no less. Ending with comments on my lack of morals, lack of love for my children because I didn't care about their everlasting life and that she still loved me and would continue to pray for me. She also said she hoped we could be friends. I told her no! We could be mother and daughter, but that I would no longer keep my feeling to myself and that if she couldn't agree to disagree.....then our conversations would be few and far between. She agreed to my terms and informed me she would continue to talk about the "truth" and I told her I would continue to offer her proof of the lies told by the "Organization". I told her I loved her and hung up.
I then poured myself 4 fingers of Jack Daniels and cried with relief!