What "Awoke" you from the Watchtower's grip?

by JH 17 Replies latest jw friends

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  eddie c

  Hi to you "bigmouth"...Pete, and to and to you Steve,

  Yes i am fortunate in that me my wife and three sons survived the trauma of breaking free from the Watchtower.

  Thinking back to the time my wife told me that she no longer wanted to be a witness,she added that "she just wanted to live a normal life,even if just for a week,if Jehovah then destroyed her, then so be it".

  Even now after all these years it feels good to be free from bondage to men. My heart though does go out to those who have lost thier loved ones and to those who are it seems permanently scarred as a result of thier time in the Watchtower.

  Some spiritual paradise..what!

  Eddie
• 

  moanzy

  For me it was a combination of things. Probably the most significant was feeling like I had to make the choice between keeping my little family together or staying in.

  Yes that and my dad rolling down the street when he jumped out of my vehicle while I was driving.(he was mad at me)----My little girl says "Mama, why did you throw papa out the van?"

  Moanzy
• 

  Grouper

  Being a transplant donor, obviously finding out one would be df’d for obtaining a transplant (Noah's hoax a close 2nd), but the real kicker for me was realizing that those I represented have the power to define what the bible says.

  For example I preached with many PO’s and CO’s that the bible thought the generation we are living in was going to see the end of the system of things, and they used the bible to show how Jesus said this and then formulated the question of how long a generation was, and then eagerly answered that the bible also answered this in question, then went to psalms and show that a generation lasted 80 years or so.

  But all this changed in 1995 and my mind was able to discern that if they can change not only the answer but the question, how then could I possibly believe this crap and let alone teach it as truth to others………………… if only I could say that what I believed was based on FAITH.
• 

  LDH

  Eddie, AMAZING!!!!!

  LOl @ moanzy for throwing Momma from the train Poppa out of the van.
• 

  luna2

  It was a slow awakening for me. I took everything the WTS said very seriously and made many decisions based solely on their influence....decisions that did not turn out well. I began to question why every prayerful life choice I made resulted in problems. Shouldn't following all the directives from Jah's organization have positive results? I had always put the blame on myself, thinking that I needed a lot of improvement as a witness (never was 100% regular at meetings, didn't care for field service, didn't study as hard as I thought I should) but it finally dawned on me that even when I did better in these areas, it didn't matter.

  I can remember sitting at the KH during a Watchtower study when it finally hit me how they'd suggest a lot of things (no higher education, no blood, pioneering) but would also put some disclaimer in the article so that, in effect, they'd be talking out of both sides of their mouth. I thought about how some witnesses seemed to pick and choose what they would adhere to and seemed to have no problem sending their kids to college, making a good living, taking fabulous vacations, building beautiful new homes, buying luxurious cars and generally living the good life, while others of us allowed ourselves to be beat down by the WTS until we were just crawling through life on bloodied hands and knees. I decided that I needed a break until I could figure out how to be one of those more self-confident, self-loving JWs. I needed to be someone who wasn't blown this way and that by whatever wind broke from Bethel that particular week, year or month.

  I had finally, finally recognized how often those supposedly God-inspired men changed their minds and how much damage they did to those of us who believed they were what they said they were and were so ready to follow their every suggestion.
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  fullofdoubtnow

  I was having serious doubts, and once I started reading on here and sites like freeminds, I knew it was time to leave the jws.
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  Honesty

  The following comes straight out of God's mouth through the Faithful Slave Class down to the congregations:

  ***

  w72 1/1 p. 32 Questions From Readers ***

  While both homosexuality and bestiality are disgusting perversions, in the case of neither one is the marriage tie broken. It is broken only by acts that make an individual "one flesh" with a person of the opposite sex other than his or her legal marriage mate.

  You know it's time to take action when you read stuff like this on the WATCHTOWER LIBRARY CD.
• 

  Rescripting_myself

  I grew up in JWism from age 6 when my father was getting indoctrinated. My grandma was very opposed and what she said resulted in cognitive dissonance in me. My cognitive dissonance only increased with time even I was getting baptized at age 12. It increased to the point where my emotional pain became too much to bear and I turned to the internet.

  What I found out on the net and what I read in CoC and Apocalypse Delayed sealed my fate.

  I'm happy that I was able to get my parents and simblings out of it by initially deliberately increasing their cognitive dissonance which in turn forced them to explore alternative perspectives.