So we had a conversation with my in-laws last night that thoroughly ticked me off and this is the only place that I can vent about it, so here goes!
Now my husband and I have avoided doing “real” service for months. Actually, for nearly a year or so. We’ve used the excuse that my husband has had to work, the baby’s sick, it’s too cold for the baby etc. When we do go, we say we’re working as a family and take off on our own, or we do a couple RV’s then take a coffee break that pretty much ends the morning. It’s a slightly pathetic situation … but you know how it is.
Anyways … as we become more and more fed up with this religion, we sometimes get a bit of a mischievous streak where we want our families to KNOW how we really feel. So this past Saturday, we weren’t out in service (we spent a lovely morning as a family and took our son to visit a farm near our house) and my son decided to call his dad around 10:30 just to talk about when they were coming to visit next. My husband asked his dad where they were, since he had tried the home phone and no one answered. My father in law replied “we’re out in service, where else would we be on a Saturday morning?”.
Now, fast forward to yesterday. My in laws came over to have dinner and spend some time with us and our son. I guess my husbands phone call set off some alarm bells. As soon as they walked in the door, it was like “JW bombing”. Asking my son, “where is Jehovah? Up! Up”. Talking non stop about good public talks that were given recently in their hall. Then out of the blue my mother in law asks us, “so how are you doing in your congregation?” (now she has never asked this before, not in the entire 6 ½ years that we have been married. Not when we switched halls. Never). My husband kind of rolled his eyes and went to go outside to fiddle with dinner on the bbq. And she went on, in that annoying “mother” tone, “your father is an elder, he can call and find out”.
I can’t even describe to you how close I came to “blowing our cover”. Or at the very least, telling her off in a very strongly worded way. It made me realize how ridiculous this pretense is getting. I feel like I’m a teenager trying to hide something from my parents. I also realized that I can now never leave my son alone with them … because if they feel for one second that we are not doing what we are supposed to as good witness parents, then every moment they have with him they will shove this religion down his throat in hopes that they will reach his heart. And I will not lose my son to this religion.
Anyways … this is just a stupid, annoying story that I needed to get off my chest. Anyone else have any to share, so that we can all just kind of laugh together about how stupid this is??