I have an old friend from JW's that has been trying to track me down. She finally found me today. Of course to invite me to Memorial. I told her very politely but firmly I wasn't going. She wanted to know why I left, and I gave her a few brief reasons and figured she would leave. But no, she came in and sat down on my couch and we made small chit-chat, and then. . .
She ended up on my couch in tears!! Her husband is an elder, but he is a closet alcoholic, and constantly screams at her. She went on and on about the bad things that happened in her marriage and in the congregation, and said she even questions Jehovah sometimes, but has decided that it is her fault, her relationship with him isn't strong enough. (sigh) Just bad story after bad story, I felt so sorry for her. We finally got her cleaned up and freshly re-makeuped so she could go back out to the car group. I felt so bad for her, because it was obvious in all these years she doesn't have anyone to talk to that I told her she knows where I live, I'm home a lot and if she ever needed anyone to talk to, she could just come by and talk, as long as we understood the ground rules to be no talking about anything JW or anti JW related.
I feel kind of heartened, because she was always one of the embarrassing hardcore faithful. She talked about not agreeing with everything the Society said, and she said she feels she's learned compassion, and feels that JW's don't do a good job showing it, and she believes that when Armageddon comes Jehovah won't destroy as many people as JW's think, that there are a lot of people that have good hearts (apparently there's been a lot of DFings in her family, and she still keeps in touch with those people) that he won't destroy. It made me wonder what state the JW's are in if someone that has been super-hardcore-faithful all their life still believes, but has that many doctrinal issues with them.