JA47646

I was out garage saling a few Saturdays ago when I ran into someone who looked familiar. She said, "I know you, don't I?" and immediately I recognized her from a twig here in my medium sized southern city. She had been a WOW here over 27 years ago and stayed with her husband and raised her children here. I asked her what she has done since the old Way days and to my complete surprise, she and her husband are still running a Wayfer twig here!!! How can someone run a Wayfer twig for over 27 years??? Oh my goodness, I can't imagine how tiresome and old that must be! I kept my mouth shut. What good would it do to ask her how she can still believe that mess after all these years and hopefully maturity might have set in. Honestly, I can't imagine!

yup, we were trained to become very isolated - our only friends were to be fellow Wayfers. It may have not been openly stated at first (I was in from 73 to 87) but later it became very obvious that only fellow wayfers could "understand" us - you know, that unequally yoked kind of thing. So I spent all of my young adult life moving every year, living with only wayfers, subordinating my family (who were very supportive of me although not of the Way)and for heavens sake never accepting any type of church - how would they know The Word of God!!! I was young (17) when i "took the class" and fully bought into the Way (although thank God I never went into the corps) and when it fell apart in 86 I felt totally alone and lost. It took me almost 25 years to join a church again and still longer to let people close to me again. By the grace of God and reading a lot of psychology books and working with a Christian therapist and being loved in a truly wonderful church I am starting to let people close to me again. As for the trinity, it doesn't really matter when it comes down to it. What matters is the love and full acceptance of fellow Christians and God's love and full acceptance (even though we are all messes when it comes down to it!) of us just as we are. Galatians 5:1 - it is for freedom Christ hath set us free! (And Christ ain't absent either!) I feel for all those wayfers still at HQ - they have allowed themselves to be put under the yoke of bondage and I hope they someday will let themselves go free. I have no illusions though. If my current church turns away from the wonderful place it is now, I will turn away and find some place better. I'm not getting stuck for another 14 years + again!

I was in a rush to get married - had to beat my 30th birthday. I did - by 3 months to someone I really did not know. We have made a life but I might as well have stayed single since that is what this marriage is - and it sucks. He believes a wife was put here on earth to submit and serve and to my eternal shame that's what I did for quite some time. Until I finally grew up, left waybrain behind and started standing up for myself. The Way left people woefully unprepared for anything but living the Way life. Thank God VP died and woke up people like me.

I've learned infinitely more about healing than I ever did in 13 years with TWI. Everytime I tried to "minister" to anyone in TWI I always, always blamed myself for not having "the gift" of healing. I did minister to someone once while going door to door and they were healed on the spot - still didn't show up to twig the next night, darn't. And my mom was sick once, called all over town looking for me. When I got home she begged me to pray for her and she was also healed instantaneously. Other than that I always felt like a terrible failure at it. But around my fifties I "developed" fibromyalgia and couldn't get off the couch for a few years. I called all kinds of Christian groups to pray for me. Then, long story, I ended up in a psychologist's office and after vomiting out all kinds of sad, bad stuff (like my experience as a Wayfer, and why I became one in the first place), all that physical pain went away. Still hasn't come back after several years.

After spending the last 2 1/2 years in psychotherapy, I see why I spent 13 years in the Way. I never fit anywhere. I was the only girl born when 3 brothers were almost grown. I was a Baptist who learned about TWI in Sunday school!!! At 17 I was so hungry for physical affection getting a "holy kiss" at my first twig "hooked" me. Again, not a whole lot of Wayfers were former Baptists in Wichita! I refused to quit college before I finished, again bucking the Wayfer trend of the time. I lived in 5 different states and met some awesome people whom I still love and think of with love and pray for when they cross my mind. But now I live a very staid, suburban life, raising teenagers and recently joining a church. The last church I joined was when I was 15!!! It took me 40 years to take that plunge again and I'm already questioning if I made the right decision! But my life is infinitely better and whole and I understand the decisions I made in my past and I'm thankful for the experiences, of The Way, of leaving the Way, of living and growing as a Christian. I got born again in my bedroom at age 8 and I knew then my life was changed. And I asked God for a life that was never boring, and boy, has He fulfilled that promise! My mother told me that being different from everyone else is a great thing. As always, she was right.

I remember someone I went to high school with who was in the corps, killed herself during a weekend in the word in Wichita in the seventies. C*** Shi((ds. I heard rumors but never anything out in the open at the time.

I'm sure this topic has been covered before but thought I would bring it up anyway. When reading Kristin Skedgell's book she talks about her husband being a batterer. I know I had one particular friend who would describe her husband beating her then he would calmly go, sit down and read the Bible as if nothing happened. But not all abuse is physical. I for one can attest that emotional/psychological abuse is very prevalent in Way marriages. How many of you ex-wayfers put up with abuse in your marriages? Just food for thought, but obviously all of us were living under a spiritually abusive hierarchy with men being the main abusers.

Shellon, This is an unbelievably evil e-mail you received! Absolutely UNBELIEVABLE! unfortunately typical of wayfers! Please know those of us who were sane enough to leave are praying for you and your family! And thank God we have a loving, kind father who would do anything for us! ja47646

Hey, Newbie and fellow NCer, We may have not been taught that we had to earn God's love in words, but certainly by actions! Remember "God won't even spit in your direction if you don't tithe!" Boy, I sure do. And you know what, I give freely now and haven't tithed for 20 years and I'm still here and blessed. Thanks, ja47646

Hey, Foot on a Rock, Hate to pick on a newbie but we MUST be able to go further than we were taught! Otherwise we would still be in the Dark Ages! By listening to the posters here it sounds like Dr. Rawlins practiced medicine way past her prime. I've got to admit by going to her memorial service (we can't say funeral in TWI) I wished I had gotten to know her but since I left TWI 20 years ago, she wouldn't have been allowed to see me or wouldn't have wanted to see me. Personally, I enjoy my "untouchable" status by Wayfers. This is a great big tangent I'm about to go on but I listen to another Bible teacher on TV and he's teaching so much about not earning God's love and blessings. Even though TWI supposedly taught that, they sure didn't live it. When I went to Dr. Rawlins' service it brought me back to the "so-called" discipline of TWI - how we all had to be ON TIME, etc. we had to earn God's love by tithing, witnessing, SIT, etc. or God wouldn't spit in our direction. Just my 2 cents.

Just looked up Arnold in the local phone book - he lives in Colfax, NC - where we dropped him off about 20 years ago after moving to NC.

Hey, I live in Greensboro. Moved here 20 years ago and then I swore I would never NEVER say "Hey". When my first child said hey, I told him we were yankees and I never wanted to hear that out of his mouth! I LOVE NC! Just got back from the Great Smokies where we tubed in Deep Creek and rode the Great Smoky Railroad. This state is the best - mountains 1 1/2 hours a way and beach 3 hours a way. what else could you ask for in life?

Outandabout, it was great to read your story. I was a WOW in Clarksdale, MS that year you were in Greenville. You do not know how much JT and i would look forward to seeing you when you came to visit. I still shudder when I think of that place (otherwise known as the armpit of the universe.) I don't really think much about that year. I remember meeting your husband at the ROA in 1985. I also got married that summer and we will have made it 20 years this coming Wednesday. All the time I was in TWI all i ever wanted out of life was a husband, home and family. On days when my kids drive me nuts my husband just looks at me and says "I gave you what you always wanted!" A lot of people "just disappeared" that year in MS. One of the WOWs in my group left - his girlfriend drove down and picked him up. The one guy who made it all year with us died the next year in an odd home accident. One of the WOWs down near the coast killed herself and it just seemed like people kind of "dropped like flies." Mississippi was a very rough place. I remember we had black friends (a very big nono in MS) and we once went to see one of them at the K-Mart where he worked. He was fired the next day. Every call after 10 pm and before 6 am was an obscene/threatening call so we learned not to answer the phone. No one (I mean NO ONE) came to twig. We actually ran one class of 1 - 2 (only because the limb leaders wanted to have at least one class). I could not wait to leave and on the way out of town I gave the place the bird and have never even traveled close to the place. It was great to see your story. I hope things go well with you - you were always a breath of fresh air and had a novel way of looking at life. ja47646

This happened the year after we left TWI. We were driving to my in-laws for Thanksgiving and were absolutely, flat busted broke on our buts. We had just bought a house and had a 1 y/o baby and did not have the mortgage payment and the night before we left our stove broke. We got caught in a snow storm on the way to the in-laws and used a credit card to stay in a very cheap hotel. Anyway, we survived the trip and on the way back to our home my husband (who has excellent eye sight) saw what he thought was a bank bag lying in the middle of the highway. He turned the car around and stopped and picked up the bag. Inside was $1,500 cash and no name, no receipt, no proof of who it might belong to. Because I was a big old girl scout at heart, I made him turn the money in to the local police. They said to keep it since they felt it probably belonged to a drug dealer who had gotten caught in the same storm we did on the way up and that money paid for our mortgage and a new stove. We gave them our names and address and were told if someone claimed they lost it they had 5 years to claim it. My son is now 15 and no one (as of yet) has claimed it.

Howdy, likeaneagle. I live in Greensboro and maybe it's because I'm not southern but I would avoid this town like the plague. We have lived here 18 years and found it to be very clickish and have been very put off by the folks here. It's a beautiful city but expensive and not very friendly. North Carolina, however, is a GREAT place to live! I've grown to love being able to go to the beach in 3 hours and the mountains in 1 1/2 hours. Any place but Greensboro...

Gotta good one for you - I heard Billy Joel was a seed boy. Hanging around a twig one night back in the early eighties, we were all looking at The Stranger album (great one, by the way!) and someone said they could tell he was seed because you could see so much of the white of his eyes - HOW ABSOLUTELY LUDICROUS! Seemed to me everyone that was even remotely successful in the public eye had to be seed - like some jealous streak by the TWI leaders because they couldn't get the fame they craved, huh... What about the silly rumor started in the way that the original Jimmy Carter had been killed and replaced with a seed boy - they could tell because he had aged so much while only in office for 4 years. Maybe he aged so much because he was such an incredibly rotten president!!!

I've been looking for a dear old friend who was in Omaha - Robert Wilkinson. I think he was 11th corps and worked as a window washer. Don't know if he's in or out.