Heavy heart

Happy Saturday afternoon,

How is everyone doing on this hot and beautiful day. I do hope you are keeping cool and enjoying your weekend. I’d love to hear from you, so please shoot me a text or drop me a comment and if you haven’t subscribed to my blog yet, I’d sure appreciate your support.

I am loving my day and just being home. I was able to chime in with my girl tribe which is always nice. This coming Friday is spa day and we’ll be celebrating two birthdays, which will be fun and exciting. All the ladies going have already booked their treatments and I’m excited to be getting a facial. I usually get a massage, but John bought us this incredible massage chair a couple years back for Christmas and it does so much better then paying $150 for one at a spa. It’s been awhile since I’ve done a facial, so I’m pretty excited to have one done. I might even try and get my nails done before spa day.

It’s always a wonderful treat spending time with my girl tribe. I am so beyond blessed to have so many amazing people in my life. My kiddos, John, family, framily and friends.

Today I wanted to chat with you all about something that is weighing heavily upon my heart. While I know this situation is out of my control, it still triggers so many emotions.

I have this beautiful 15 year old niece and today, she’s dedicating her life to the cult in which I left 8 years ago. Today this young lady was baptized and she’s vowed to live her life in harmony with the JW organizations interpretation of what the Bible says.

While it warms my heart to see her love for God, it also weighs on me what this dedication means. You see, when you get baptized as a JW, you give your life over to the organization of Watchtower. You vow to live the rest of your life in accordance to their teachings.

As a young lady, growing into womanhood, my niece has given over her ability to question the teachings of Watchtower. She can’t fall in love with an outsider and if she does, she is facing the grand possibility of being shunned. She is now dedicated to being in subjection to men. Should she marry a fellow witness, he will become her head and while the Watchtower claims to encourage the husband to take his wife into consideration, much of the time, from what I’ve personally seen and experienced, the wife really has no say in matters of any kind. A woman cannot pray in front of her husband. She cannot teach another in front of her husband. She is required to help in the teaching of their children should they have them, however, what she teaches and the way she teaches are under her husbands direction.

Teamwork is more like a dictatorship from my personal experience from being a witness for nearly 45 years.

Note this from the Watchtower, March 15, 1964 page 178 par. 4: ⁴ Under the direction of her husband, the Christian wife can do much to train up the children in the way they should go to please Jehovah. She should help them to cultivate a healthy respect for their father, never doing anything to undermine his position as head of the family. Not only by words, but also by example, she should set the children in the ways of right conduct. No doubt she will have more time with the children than her husband, and she can make good use of this time to build up the children’s appreciation for the truth, for Jehovah’s organization, for the meetings, for the preaching of the good news, and to help them to share in the meetings and in the ministry to the extent they are able.—1 Tim. 5:10.

While I have zero issue with the man being the head of his home, I also feel that the wife is equally important. I have come to realize that teamwork within the marriage is vital. It’s not just the man who makes all the decisions. I feel strongly that as husband and wife, they should work together, making decisions that affect the family and home. In the JW religion, women are considered the weaker vessel, literally. Rarely does she have say so, it all fall upon her husband to make the families decisions. Right or wrong, he is the decision maker. This statement is based upon personal experience.

I admire my niece for taking a stand for what she believes in, at the same time, as an adult who left the cult/religion, I know what her dedication to the religion means for her and for the rest of her life.

I’ve said this before and I still stand by this statement, if you are a JW and you’re happy as one and this is truly the life you want to live, then by all means, great, however, as young people getting baptized into the religion of JW, the price you pay should you choose to leave when you are an adult, it’s the heaviest one you’ll ever pay.

I support my nieces choice to love and dedicate herself to God. By all means, it’s an admirable thing and her decision and desire to live her life in accordance with her belief is wonderful. I wish more young ones had the faith in their creator that she does. My heart is simply heavy knowing what she is truly getting baptized into, especially is she changes her mind when she is a grown woman.

As a person grows up and matures, they change. We change. We develop new ways of thinking. We learn to question things. We try on new likes and dislikes and we form opinions of life and how we see the world. When you are a JW youth, raised in their belief system and you dedicate your life to that belief system, you can’t change your mind in the future. Your dedication to Watchtower is a life long commitment.

I hope my niece always has a love for God. I pray she will forever want to follow his direction as outlined in scripture and I hope she is happy in her life of dedication to him. I also hope she finds the courage to always question the things she’s taught. I hope she doesn’t fall into the trap of simply believing in something because that’s what she’s told to do. She is 15 years old and she has her entire life ahead of her. She has the opportunity to learn new things all while keeping her faith in her creator. She’s also signed up for a life of doing as she’s told. Giving of all her spare time in trying to recruit others into the religion. She’s giving herself to a religion that prohibits the questioning of scripture as interpreted by the governing body of Watchtower.

Jehovah’s Witnesses as a group of people are generally good, well intended people. Most who are true followers do believe wholeheartedly that what they preach and teach is the truth. I admire those. I used to be one who truly believed, until one day I had a question about the shunning policy and I was told it wasn’t for me to question. I was told that the person being shunned deserved the punishment even though she begged for mercy. I was told that it was by means of God’s holy spirit that the elders made their decision to disfellowship this person. It was those words that opened my eyes to how unloving the disfellowshipping policy was and continues to be. It opened my eyes that questioning with all sincerity wasn’t allowed. I was supposed to just have faith that it was God’s will.

I am shunned by many JW’s because I questioned certain teachings. I am considered by some, an apostate. Funny, I still believe in God with all my heart. I pray to him daily. I have a relationship with him, yet, some who are JW’s see me as an unbeliever. I questioned the religion and it cost me some of my family and so-called friends.

I hope my niece never has to pay that price for the freedom to think and question the teachings of Watchtower. I hope her decision to get baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses is one that she’ll always cherish rather then regret.

My niece is a beautiful person, inside and out and this religion/cult, it changes people. It pulls them away from those that don’t share in their belief system. It makes you think in black and white with no exception for questioning the gray.

My heart is heavy knowing what my amazing niece has signed up for. I can only pray now that her decision is never one of remorse.

My heart is heavy for the innocent being indoctrinated into religions/cults where changing your mind will cost you.

My dear readers, I do hope you all have the greatest of days and weekends. I hope no matter what your belief system is that you continue to learn and grow. I truly believe that God wants us to learn. I believe from the beginning of time until the end of our days we are meant to learn, not only lessons, but values and we are to gain knowledge.

I’ll leave you with this quote, “God’s love is like an ocean. You can see its beginning, but not its end.”-Rick Warren.

Until next time, thank you for taking the time to read today’s blog and don’t forget, Love Life++ Hugs.