I'm so sorry to hear about what you're going through. I was raised as a JW also, but was in public school. I never seemed to fit in with anyone. My mother was raised as Church of Christ and my father was raised Baptist. They disliked each other's religions, so they found another one. This was around 1970 and I think it was when my mother was pregnant with me that they started studying with JWs. Along the time that my older sister was entering kindergarten, my mother was hesitant to enroll her, since the time of the end was to be in 1975 and she was starting in 1974. My dad insisted that she start school and stopped attending the meetings along the time that he knew that the prophecy that was made didn't come true. I didn't put that together until I was grown, but I realize now that's what happened. It's funny what a small child really does understand and remembers as an adult. My mother continued to go to meetings and took us (my sister and me) with her. As we got older, we rebelled and got involved with "worldly" children and did "worldly" things. We were never baptized and we grew way away from the "truth." Our mother kept going to the kingdom hall and to the day she died, believed in her heart that they were right. It's only been since my mother died that I have really started digging into the roots of the JW religion and found out about all of the false prophecies that were made even before the one about 1975. JWs are warned to not read "apostate" literature, to study the Bible on their own or to attend any other church and it's because they are afraid that their followers will learn the truth about the "truth." I'm sure that the elders in the kingdom halls don't know the real truth about all the false prophecies. I was so messed up before I came to know Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. As a child, I was taught sin would keep us from eternal life and that it was even a sin to be raped and that a person who was raped, would not inherit God's Kingdom, so it was better to be killed than to be raped.... Wow....We do not "earn" salvation by our works! Salvation is a free gift to whosoever believeth in HIM! When I was young, I always felt doomed, and knew I was not worthy... none of us are worthy and it's an insult to what Jesus did for us to think that we can earn salvation. Jesus was the atoning sacrifice for all of our sins, the only ONE who was without sin who could have possibly satisfied the Father in Heaven. That doesn't give us a free pass to do whatever we want, but it does mean that He forgives us. Once we truly belong to Him, we can't be plucked from the hand of the Father!
