When I was fairly young, my father took us to the Methodist Church in our little home town for Sunday School and Church. At one point I was even an acolyte. My father had attended a Methodist seminary as a young man with a view to being a minister, but halfway through, decided that he would switch to psychology. Methodism is a fairly harmless flavor of Protestantism. I don't remember learning anything there.
When I got to be a teenager, certain things started to bother me, like the pledge of allegiance. I started to recite my own version, which excluded God altogether, and ended, "with Liberty and Justice for some people". I started dwelling on more important things, such as contemplating my existence as a human being, and what was going to happen to me when I died. I concluded that I would just go out of existence, and become what I was before I was born--nothing. The whole idea of returning to nothingness was enough to make me freak myself out. I had no real basis for believing anything else.
I also started questioning other things, such as why there was never much mention of Jesus in our house on Christmas. I recall one Christmas making my father sit down with us kids, and read the account of Jesus' birth from the Bible. As so many billboards still encourage around the holidays, I was trying to "put the Christ back in Christmas".
So I was in a primed condition when, during our first year of college, my girlfriend's sister sent us a Truth book. Her sister, before becoming one of Jehovah's Witnesses, had led quite a wild life. While married to an ex-convict, she had left college suddenly in New York, and hopped freight trains out west. Eventually, she became a waitress in a Playboy Club in California, where she met her husband, who played in the band there. They had started studying, and eventually moved to a very rural area of Kansas where the "need was greater".
Noting such a change in her life, we were curious what sort of teaching was powerful enough to make someone change that much. So along with the Truth book, she also had a couple from the congregation in our college town contact us. Thus began our personal Watchtower Odyssey.
We finished our first year of college while studying with this couple (they were about our parents' age, and he was an elder in the congregation). That summer, 1972, we continued our Bible study with another couple back in our hometown, another elder and his wife. So as to avoid making our parents mad and risking them stopping us, we would tell them that we were going to a movie, and instead go to our study.
Returning to college in the fall, we continued studying and going to the meetings at the Kingdom
Hall. Since we had stopped having sex after learning that it was only for married couples, and since we were still "inflamed with passion", we decided that we should get married. At this point our plan was to let our parents know of our three-fold decision—we wanted to become Jehovah's Witnesses, we wanted to get married, and we wanted to quit school.
As the Watchtower Society was giving all indication that the system was going to end in 1975, we were following their advice of not putting our trust in the "world" and wordly education. My father was very upset with our decision, and said that he would only sign for me to get married (I was only 19) if I agreed to return to school. I said that I would, but I fully intended to quit after the next semester... after all, he had only demanded that I return to school.
So we were baptized at the circuit assembly at the new Monroe Assembly Hall in upstate NY in May of 1973. We attended the international convention at Yankee Stadium that summer, with 80,000 in attendance and about 1,500 baptized. This was part of the great ingathering that was taking place prior to 1975. We were married in August, and I returned to college in September. The elder who married us, along with his wife, had bought an old house and fixed up an
apartment for us. I went back to school for my last semester, and my wife went to work full time.
During that semester, I began to learn the trade of piano tuning and repair, which was to become my life's work. I also was appointed a ministerial servant in the congregation following my 20th birthday. We stayed there through 1974, and, then decided to move back to our hometown to be near the grandparents. We left there on Jan. 1, 1975, not knowing what the new year would bring.
Our son Josh was born in August, and the year ended with the old system still intact. I had taken a job driving a bakery truck, and worked part-time doing some piano tuning and teaching private piano lessons. Our daughter Naomi was born the following December. Life seemed pretty fulfilling at the time. I had been reappointed a ministerial servant in our new congregation, and was working behind the literature counter at the hall. We were the ideal little witness family.
On my lunch breaks because of the bakery schedule, I would come home and spend time with the kids, reading and playing with them. In 1977, I took another job as an assistant manager in a wholesale grocery warehouse, where I could make a little more money. About a year later, I heard about a brother, an elder, who lived about an hour north of us, who was looking for another brother to buy his full time piano tuning operation. We made arrangements, and by May of 1978, had moved away from our hometown once again. My wife was not happy about moving away from her family again, but did not argue about moving because of the wonderful opportunity that this was presenting to us. Settling into our new congregation, I was again reappointed as a ministerial servant, doing service meeting parts, and occasionally conducting the book study, giving public talks, and even conducting the Watchtower study when the elders were away at "elder school".
We were okay for several years following the move, but unbeknownst to me, my wife was harboring resentment that I had "made" us move to where we had no family. In the winter of 1982-83, she got involved with a brother in the congregation, another ministerial servant, and they ended up committing adultery. Neither of them was disfellowshipped, in spite of the fact that they both had been privately and publicly reproved for loose conduct. I was completely devastated--up until then, neither of us had ever been "with" anyone else ever before. I decided to forgive her, and to try to keep our family together, but things were never the same after that.
We decided to have another baby, as we felt that the times when we had babies were were our happiest ones. Having never gone through anything like this themselves, none of the elders were very helpful in assisting me through this time. Zach was born in December of 1983, and only two months later, my wife announced that she was in love with yet another ministerial servant. At this point, realizing that I was running out of dignity as fast as the congregation was running out of servants. I threw in the towel, and had an affair with this second "brother's" sister! (Stay with me, now). The whole thing was quite a scandal in the congregation, with all four of us being
disfellowshipped.
Looking back, I know that I could not have felt more remorseful for what I had done, but the elders didn't see it that way. And even though I was a "first offender", and had just gone through all that I had gone through, I was OUT. In fact the presiding overseer at the time was so personally offended by all this, and felt that we had brought so much shame on the congregation, that he pronounced a year's sentence on us all. "Don't even think about coming back before then", he said to us. It was bad enough being disfellowshipped, losing my family and all my friends, but to be told this was especially discouraging.
With a whole year to wait, and out of respect for my sanity, I found other things to occupy my time. I started playing music out in restaurants and clubs, began dating, and eventually became heavily involved with local theater work. As a result, I developed friendships that have proven to be more meaningful than the ones that suddenly vaporized when I started to have personal problems.
Now, 18 years later, my ex and 3 oldest children are all faithfully attending the Kingdom Hall. The 'children', now 27, 25, and 18, all shun me. My oldest son is married, and his JW wife is expecting in January, 2003. I have already been informed that I will not be allowed to see my grandchild. (I am, of course, checking to see what my legal rights are in this area!).
I am happier now, much happier than in my witness days. I am stronger, more confident and am enjoying myself being able to use my God-given talents in areas that are really fulfilling. I miss my children terribly, but I will never submit to what boils down to emotional blackmail--they will only have something to do with me if I'm once again a JW.
My only regret is that I allowed myself to get involved with the witnesses in the first place. All my
problems rooted with them, and now I have them to thank for alienating my children from me, as well. I have remarried, to someone I met in the theater, and now have two NON-JW sons, Griffin, born in 1999, and Bailey, born in 2001! I LOVE celebrating holidays... in fact, when there are none coming up on the calendar, I'll invent my own to celebrate!!
There really IS a wonderful 'life after Watchtower'!!!
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