Hi everyone!
I just wanted to introduce myself ... i've been following this forum for a few months and finallly joined. My parents became Witnesses when I was four years old. Even when I was younger I always had doubts (my sweet old grandparents were "wicked" and would be destroyed at Armageddon???) but I still played the part as best I could. I got into trouble as a teenager, then pioneered straight out of high school. I got married very young. We lived in my parents basement at first, so that kind of forced us to be regular publishers. We've since bought our own house and are on our own. In spite of the doubts I always had, I was always deathly afraid of looking into "apostate" literature. But when Ray Franz's books came to my attention, I couldn't see how a book by a former governing body member could be ignored. Reading those books confirmed many things that I guess I really knew all along. I am very fortunate in that my husband actually shares the same feelings I do - we recently confessed this to each other a few months ago! But, we're not ready to give up the friends and family just yet. Both of us grew up in "the truth", and really have no other life outside of it. Our families are heavily involved in the congregation. What complicates things even further is that we just had a beautiful son and I would feel horrible to take him away from his grandparents and aunts (Not because we would turn our backs on them, but because they would feel it's their duty to turn their backs on us). But I can't raise him in this religion. I will not let him grow up being terrified of Armageddon and believing that everyone else who is not one of Jehovah's Witnesses is "worldly" and therefore wicked. I'm not going to let him grow up thinking that his parents only love him conditionally - only if he chooses their religion. I want to raise him with Christian values, and I want to teach him about God and Jesus and love and respect for life and a sense of wonder about the world around him. But as I said, it's complicated. For now we're kind of in this grey area, half in and half out, as I suspect so many are. It feels a bit hypocritical and I hate that, and one day when our son is older, I know we'll have to make a decision. Until then we're just hanging in there. Anyways ... it's nice to have a place like this, with so many other people who know what it's like. "Apostates" aren't nearly as terrible as the organization made them out to be.