Well, here goes. I've posted several comments on this board, and love reading everyones comments. Today I was looking through the old postings, and found the threads that were started by an old freind of mine. Reading his blow by blow accounts of what happened to him on his way out was heart breaking and life affirming at the same time. My wife has been encouraging me to post my experince as a way to really start healing myself. She is a wonderful woman, and I am the luckiest man on earth to have her. She is right, it's time...This may seem a little long, but it's been years in the works, so please bear with me.
I was born in California to two very committed hippies. We lived on a commune in Berkeley for a few years until my Dad began to want to get away from all of it. We moved to Wisconsin, and my Mom secretly began studying with JWs. She was baptized when I was 5 years old. She only told my Dad that she was a witness after the convention where she got baptized. No wonder he started drinking! I was always a good little witness boy, aux-pioneering right after high school, and was appointed an MS a few years later. I never felt I fit in though, I was always attracted to anything outside the norm, skateboarding, punk rock, literature. When I met my wife, she was a little skate betty. I didn't think that witness girls came in that model, so I was head over heels! Before we got married, I moved out to the "big city" of Milwaukee. Thats when the problems started. Not being around my Mom, I found I really didn't want to go to meetings, service, study, any of that. I just figured I was not spiritually strong enough. My cognitive dissonance was really kicking in. I'm sure some of you can relate to this feeling, something about this doesn't make sense, it's just that you can't let your brain go there.
Anyways, through some big ups and downs, We decided to move to the state of my birth, as my parents had recently moved back. I started working for a brother with a large roofing company, and started saving to move the rest of the family out. During this time, my closest freind from my old hall, wrote a DA letter. It shocked me because we had pioneered together, been appointed servants around the same time, he was even my best man in our wedding. I heard about all of this second hand, and was toubled enough that I spoke to the elders about it. As a side note...if you are interested in reading his experiences, look under Winston Smith in the members directory. He has some of the most eloquent posts on this board.
After my wife and kids joined me, things were good for a while. But something had been eating at both of us. The are we moved to had some pretty affluent areas. I began to see that the hall actually had some of the wealthiest members of the community. The brother that I worked for was one of them. His roofing business had taken off, and he actually owned a very successful vineyard in Napa. It stuck in my craw when we had to sit through talks by members of the hall who had fallen into the family business give talks about keeping ourselves simple, you know, don't work overtime, things like that, and then watch them drive away in a new Mercedes. I was working at least 50 or 60 hours a week just to keep us afloat. It didn't seem right to me...How could some have so much, while some have nothing. It has nothing to do with being "spiritual", it just seemed like dumb luck to me.
As time went on, we kind of began to drop out, but still felt guilty about it, after all it's still the "truth" right? Then for me, the bomb hit. Long story short, I started researching 607 B.C.E. after seeing something on the history channel
that used 587 as a set in stone fact. After that, the scales fell off my eyes, and within the space of a couple of days, I knew the truth about the "truth". I kept this hidden from my wife and family, how do you bring this up? I do remember being at a couple of meetings after that. I had never paid such close attention in my whole life! How in the hell could I have fallen for this tripe? I got in touch with "Winston" again, and after comparing notes, found out we found the same reasons bothered us both...I guess we pioneered together for a reason!
Now the fun began. I began talking to my wife about all that I now believed. This did not go well at first. She was scared, wich made me a little bit angry, big mistake on my part. I realize now that everyone needs to find their own way out. Anyway, because we were missing so many meetings, the elders started sniffing around. When I was finally surprised at home, I made what was maybe the biggest mistake of my life, or the best thing ever. After being asked about why we weren't even close to regular anymore blah blah blah, I finally brought up the things that had been bothering me, 607 vs 587. I have never seen such a change come over two faces as I saw then. They looked at each other knowingly, and one of them, with the best fake kindness I have ever seen , asked, "So, where did you get this information?" At this point I "felt a great disturbance in the force", and knew where this was going...
I realize this is getting long winded, so I will post Part Duex in the future. I don't expect this to be anything new or ground breaking, but like I said, this is really a selfish excercise on my part. This helps to try to put this life of mine down in writing, or at least attempt to. Thanks for stopping by, and May the Force Be With You!!!
