Let's see,where do I start?I decided to have a quiet drive home after work.It takes about one and half hours.No CD playing,no Talk Radio,no News, just a quiet drive listening to my own thoughts.I'm not concentrating on any one thing,just kind of letting my mind flow wherever it wants to.
Then it starts,my mind goes back to when our children were small.As I'm driving I am having this flashback,I'm going to save my family from dying at Armageddon,why the little ones are dependant on us for their future life happiness.
There will be no Birthday parties,holiday celebrations,even though one of them was born on the 4th of July.No extra-curricular activities at school,and everyone will know that they don't salute the flag,nor sing the national anthem.And at the infirmary they know that they are not to take blood.
After school homework,the preparing for meetings,more studying comes next.No TV. tonight,it's a meeting night.Oh Goody,the weekend is here,now we can go out and play.Sorry,we have to go out in field service,Mommy and Daddy will show you how to have so much fun in the field service on Saturday and Sunday.
I start to cry,literally,there is real pain in my chest and a lump in my throat.As I have this flashback on the drive home tonight.I think of how I robbed my children of their childhood,I'm getting very emotional and angry,a picture flashes across my mind of all those years,30 plus,that I lost for my wife and children.The opportunities that we turned down,we are going to survive Armageddon!
I have had a talked with my family about my regrets over having put my family through this before and they don't blame me.They feel that I was doing what I thought was the best for them at the time.They forgive me,but I having yet forgiven myself.
The family says that they learned something about life,religion etc.That the experience has not made them bitter,and they have moved on.The children are happily married and doing fine.My wife and I are doing the best that we can with what time we have left.We are in our sixties,no retirement or pension fund.Taking it day to day.
This is what happened on the quiet drive home tonight,it's been a year and a half of being inactive and still the flashbacks of the past 30 something years in the Watchtower and all of what that has entail in raising my family still wells up inside me when I try to rest my mind and think of nothing.
I cried all the way home for one and a half hours,pain in my chest and heart,my head feeling like it would explode,angry at the society for the big chunk of life that they stole from us.
And I thought of so many others sharing the same feelings and experiences as my family,and those still stuck inside.Soon as I arrived home,I collected myself together and said:"HI Honey,I'm Home! Yes really home with someone who truly loves me and loved me for the past 37 years! My Wife.And that they can never take away.
Blueblades