Today is Mar 25th. I’ve decided to write about this and post it when I’m done. Don’t know when that will be. Perhaps a few days, perhaps not. I don’t have the writing ability that so many of you have so I’m going to take my time and do the best I can.
Saturday the 23rd my JW sister came to my house for lunch. Except for a few minutes when my family buried our mother, a very devout JW, in 1992 I had not seen her in over twenty years.Let me explain some of the dynamics of my family to help you better understand where I am coming from.
I come from a family of five siblings. Two brothers, three sisters. I am next to the youngest child, being eight and a half years younger than the sister I am talking about. My brothers are the oldest and I have a sister two years younger than me. The second born brother is a witness and has been one since the 50s. My older sister also. You figure it out. That’s a long time. I was raised as one since the day my Mom opened the door to them when I was five years old. I never truly liked it and I remember being scared as hell about Armageddon. I guess my little child’s mind knew, even then, there just wasn’t something quite right about it.
I faded away from the JWs during my first marriage (60s and 70s)
In 1981 when the Sept. 15th WT article came out, the two JW siblings, one brother and sister, decided that they couldn’t talk to or see their non JW brother and sisters. They started shunning us.
20 years passed by.
18 months ago my JW brother decided to do a picture project. When my mother’s house was sold and she was moved to a rest home in the 70s he cleaned out all the old pictures and has had them since then. He decided to invite us all to send him our family pictues and he is putting them on CDs to be shared by all. Anyway, without going into to much detail some of us became acquainted again over the internet. My older sister got my email address from my brother and started to try to get reaquainted. What sparked this turn around I have no idea. New light ? I was so full of anger because of the way I had been treated, that I proceeded to tell her how I felt in no uncertain terms. I was not very nice. Most of what I said seemed to go right over her head. I never got the answers out of her that I wanted. Its darn hard to try to understand the JW mindset isn’t it? My younger sister handled it all in her own way. She just refused to answer any messages from our JW siblings. Told my brother she didn’t want to be any part of his project.
During this time my oldest daughter found Randy’s sight on the internet. She turned me on to it and the rest is history. From there I found this forum and wow …it was like someone had turned the lights on. I owe Randy and all of you here a debt of gratitude I can never repay. I just never realized how lucky I was to have escaped the Borg. My younger sister and I started talking about how lucky we were and then we came to realize how sorry we felt for our older sister who had lived all of her adult life under the domination of that terrible cult like organization
Two months ago I was up visiting my younger sister and she suggested we should make an attempt at seeing our sister before its to late and how did I feel about doing that? I agreed with her so the next day I sent our older sister an email inviting her to my house for lunch. I suggested she bring picture albums and whatever she would like to share with us (just as long as it’s not JW literature….naw, I didn’t say that) . It took her a month to get back to us. She sent us some forwards but never a word about what we had proposed. I suppose she was mulling it over pretty hard. Writing over the internet is a little different than facing a couple of apostate sisters face to face don’t you think? I guess she had to think about it long and hard.
Finally the day came for our reunion. Saturday Mar 23rd 2002. My younger sister arrived early to help me get ready. We are quilt makers and enjoy sewing and needle work so we had made our sister small welcoming gifts. We assured each other that we would be patient and would only show love no matter what happened. We didn’t know, perhaps this would be the last time we would ever see our older sister.
At 11:45AM there was a knock at the door and my younger sister and I sort of squeezed hands and I think I said “Here we go” (I don’t remember well, I guess, because the adrenalyn level was pretty high) and opened the door.
There she was, our big sister……older, but still looking like herself. She probably thought the same about us. I walked out side the door and hugged her and my little sister did the same. We welcomed her with love. She had picture albums in her hands and a big smile on her face. Lunch was late because we couldn’t stop talking. We presented out gifts to her and she cried. We all cried. I thought of the 20 years wasted because of two paragraphs in the WT. All that we had missed. (I hate you for that WT) Our children had grown up and didn’t know each other. How sad.
My little sister had brought some of her quilts and we shared that and now she would like us to teach her how to quilt.
I found out I have a nephew that is a CO in the southern states. He was a bethel worker for years. She sort of leaned over and whispered it to me. This nephew was my favorite when he was little and a great kid. I’m hoping he is sheperding with love and understanding.
All but one of her seven kids are witnesses (though some are not very good ones and that is another story). Some of her grandchildren have problems (drugs and depression).
She chose early retirement, after 10 years of service at work, and now that is running out so she has had to go back to work. Guess Armageddon didn’t come when she thought it would. So she’s back to work in her late 60s. Doesn’t seem right to me.
We took pictures and two of my grandchildren (5 and 10 yrs old) came up to meet her and they were so sweet and loving. I was so proud of them.
It was soon time to part and we agreed to stay in touch. She said “At our next get together we should…………..” She wants to go with us the next time we go to the discount fabric store to shop so she can buy the materials to make a quilt supervised by us. We hugged her and sent her on her way with love. Where all this will lead I don’t know. It’s a wait and see………
After she left my younger sister and I put our arms around each other and cried. We had seen our sister after 20 years and it had gone so well.
How do I feel about this reunion now that it’s over? I don’t know. I do know I’m not ready to give my heart away. She may change her mind tomorrow and my younger sister and I will find ourselves being shunned again. Trust, once lost is very hard to regain and can you ever really trust a JW? They are at the whim of the GB. I will continue to show her love and hope for the best. I doubt she will have some kind of awakening to the harsh realities of the WT cult, but you never know, where there’s life there’s hope. My younger sister and I agree that what we can do is show her how happy we are and as you can see she seems so want a little piece of that
Well, here is is the evening of the 28th…I’m finished.
Feels so good to share this with you.
Sunny