Being excommunicated:
As a Witnesss unless you have been excommunicated you cannot possibly imagine what it is like upon your self-image and esteem not to mention the destructive affects on your family life.
Then again to many Jehovahs Witnesss they longingly want to return to those who inflected this punishment on them, out of any number or reasons.
In my case after I had been formerly excommunicated I am using this word to define the term disfellowshiped because its difficult to find disfellowshiped it in any dictionaries, and to the ordinary person it is more understood, though the Jehovahs witnesss use this word exclusively to describe being excommunicated for vague reasons that to me personally make little sense. I recall the many emotional feelings of being excommunicated they are too numerous to list them all, so I will only center my discussion mainly on what how it affected my children.
The first night at church service after excommunication you feel that you should set at back of the hall by your self of course not that it is written anywhere to my knowledge that you must. In my case I had two daughters still at home with me during my divorce from my wife of 21 years. To have your children feel the pressure to set away from you during a church service that for all their life they had always their family had always sat together I could see as a father was causing them much grief. It has been six years, and still the image of their faces giving me a courageous smile to their daddy when we both knew our hearts were in pain and humiliated. It was at that moment that my faith was truly undermined, not for the sin that I was caught up in but to know that someone or something was hurting my loving and forgiving children and I was helpless against it.
This touches on an aspect of forgiveness that I have never seen before and that touched me forever more, is how our children can forgive us as parents much more so than any religion can. To me children are the true mirror of God, must be why Jesus said leave the children alone let the young children come to me, for the kingdom of the heavens is saved for such like ones. God is love the bible said but oh how the Witnesss deprive you of such love when you are lost along lifes path. If being excommunicated could be compared to a shoe it could never be a shoe that fits all feet, some feet have corns, calluses, bunions, flat feet, and one foot longer and so forth. Then we consider the impact on children, the gossip they have to deal with in the hall, our beloved children having to be subjected to innuendos and hushed whispers of adults as well other kids. All this adds to their burdens, rather than helping the family it contributes to its destruction at a time when it may be near the brink of divorce, it insults its unique sense of pride. What is more ghastly is how they hold the banner of the merciful God Jehovah in front of excommunication (disfellowshipment), to show off his concern and love for us.
In due course Jehovah will recover all broken hearts, and restore those who love him under his wing, and it is to him we pray to upon bended knees not to any human. Trust in Jehovah with all your heart.