I wanted to give an update to all those who kindly offered suggestions on how to deal with my JW son's ultimatum' "go tell the elders, or I will".
These last few days have been an intense crash course in life for me. Having experienced my firstborn son, whom I gave birth to, wiped his behind, dried his tears, and helped to grow to adulthood with loving support, threaten to turn me over to the "authorities" (elders) for wrong thinking and wrong speech, has been a deeply disturbing experience. Learning the truth about the "truth" was shocking, but this is just a crying tragedy.
After he found a short email from a board friend, which inadvertantly got into our regular email box instead of my private one, I was given a week to go to the elders. The note was not very, very incriminating, but problematic, containing a couple of cynical comments about the conv., and a reference to support discussions. This combined with what I had unwisely confided in him a few weeks earlier about my doubts, pumped up by recent convention exhortations about loyalty to Jehovah rather than to family, were an explosive combination.
Many here offered helpful insight and suggestions, and most importantly support which helped me feel a little less alone. I also recieved some invaluable guidance from a private correspondence with a reader of the board. I was advised how to get through it without losing everything. So I went pre-emptively to a kindly elder, told him of my depression, concern over the generation issue, and a little about the note, telling him that my son had given me the ultimatum. I tried to be as honest as I could without revealing anything really harmful. By going ahead of my son, I was able to control the information from the start. The elder was sympathetic, told me I needed to do more personal study, and tried to comfort my fears. At this point, I am cautiously optimistic that it will go no further.
Having to deal with my son in this adversarial manner is very hard, but after seeing how he has chosen to treat me, and some of the things he did, I am more firmly resolved to protect myself from future incursions of his zealousness. Not only did he read an email addressed to me in my home, he made a copy of it, and showed it to an elder friend in another cong. (This one said he would take no action, but let my son handle it.) Then he had the nerve to tell me he was put off by the blunt way I asked for it to be returned as my property. I told him, I was pretty put off by what he had done. I tried to pacify him by telling him a little of the elder conference, but he did not seem very satisfied. I think he was expecting me to get in a lot more trouble. He expressed the thought that he did not think everything got told. I said what did he want, me DF'd, He said no, he wanted me to go back the way I was before.
We tried to make peace, but things are somewhat strained. There is now a level of distrust which I know is more or less permanent, not only of him for me, but me of him as well. Anyway I have to be very careful, so I needed to go back to the "Truman" screen name I used when I briefly posted a couple of months ago. We also changed our password on the computer, so he no longer has access. What a shame to have to deal so with beloved family members! Even my husband who is still basically a believer, though long inactive, was pretty appalled by the way my son acted. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and I see now his is a WT wasteland.
Truman (Tru-wo-man) (formerly LMR)