Bramble

If life wasn't perfect, then you had somehow let the adversary in with your unbelief. Or your spouse did it--TWI was great at dividing spouses up over imperfections in income or whatever.

Today is a holiday. I'm relaxing in my small house with old furniture, we stayed up late last night watching movies and didn't run a vacuum today. The newspaper is piled next to hubby's chair and there is a cooler holding a watermelon that wouldn't fit into our fridge tucked under the dining table. We're eating a tasty but inexpensive dinner of corn on the cob, bbq chicken and cherry blueberry cobbler. If the weather cooperates we'll go to the fireworks later tonight.

None of this woud be Good Enough in TWI, where we would have had to rush around for some fellowship holiday meal, dress up(I'm wearing sweats, it is cold here) be all about how things looked...

And I'm content. I don't have to impress anyone or live up to anyone else's standards. I'm not trying to sell the minisrty to anyone by showing how perfect it makes your life.

I'm sitting on the couch with my cat, relaxing. I can live with the old furniture for a while longer and noone I now befreind will think I'm off in my believing. I can vacuum tomorrow and probably watch more old movies with the family tonight since it looks like rain. Those people who in the past would ride and judge and reprove, would set goals for ME and make life miserable, are no longer in my life. I can be comfortable in my life the way it actually is, not the way it is 'supposed' to be.

I'm so sorry for the loss of Rumrunner and send kind thoughts and light to his loved ones who will miss him so.

While we rarely agreed on anything, he was very kind to me on several occasions and I knew he desired to help where he could.

TWI leaders did not care a rip if you were listening to any still small voice. They didn't care about God or Holy Spirit or your relationship with diety in any way.

The only obedience that mattered was to the leader in your face. Anything your god might tell you was of no value--unless it backed the leader up.

TWI was corrupt. If you rebelled you were showing some moral backbone.

If we had stayed IN it could be my kids at that class. So, so glad we got free.

So far so good. Peas and beans are up and thriving. Lost a couple tomatoes in a cold snap but the others are all right. We had a week of rain but no hail! June is a crazy weather month here in the Rockies.

You have Linux? I am still fumbling around with it.

But yes, I remember that prevailing thought that everything will go wrong with life after you leave TWI. When we left the limb coord called us up to tell us what we were doing to our kids.

I think that getting hobbies/interests made a huge difference to hubby and I. In TWI our interests and talents didn't matter, and there was no time to pursue any. After we got out we both put sizeable amounts of time(and sometimes money) into new crafts/interests. It takes time to learn somthing, develop a skill, and can be a real source of satisfaction.

Seems like a small thing, but it semed to make a huge quality of life difference for us.

As far as why we allowed themto be authorities over us--I was a little girl in the sixties. I was raised to be compliant as many many girls were and still are. I wore white gloves to church on Sunday and ate with my napkin in my lap. Hubby was raised to respect authority. And in TWI, leaders were somewhat larger than life. We were saving the world...

Like you, I got involved in TWI in my early twenties and left in my early forties. Married and had kids in TWI. My hubby was in longer, he was onee of the wows that got me in PFAL.

I deliberatly quit speaking in tongues because it was what I did when I was anxious or something wasn't best. I had to remind myself NOT to sit just like I once reminded myself to sit back in my early way days.

I hung out at GSC for a couple years, then took a break then came back. I did a lot of reading on churches, belief, faith etc. Hung out at Beliefnet and religioustolerance.org. Went to mainstream churches with crosses above their altars. I came to the conclusion that th ugliness we experienced in TWI was ultimately based on their 'right' doctrine and authoritarian structure. Some people were just always going to be better than others, a fundamental unequalness that lead to abuse.

I read things that in TWI would have been not allowed. I thought things that were not allowed by TWI renewed mind doctrine. Somewhere in those early years I quit believing that every human on earth should believe a certain form of Christianity and we should all be the same.

I have found that many/most people I meet are kind and I see ordinary people maintain friendships, do kind actions all the time. It made the people I knew in my later years in TWI look driven and selfish and cynical about others...

I do know plenty of witches/pagan who 'believe to receive'--it is the basis of spell casting for many(I won't say all because there always someone different.)As far as i can tell it works about as often for them as prayers got answered back in Christian days.

Know plenty that use oracle and tarot cards, some daily....I meditate as do others in a variety of ways...many seek out occult experiences.

Yet none of them have tried to intrude into and run my life like the man o'gawds did, to declare they have authority over other's lives and 'I wanna see your sock drawer!' demands or expect me to obey their words.

As far as I can tell, the really damaging evil gets in under the 'obey the leaders' category.

It's not like a physical location you have to live in--it's on the net! You can pop in when you want, leave when you want, reply or start threads or NOT when you want! Other than following the site rules, you don't have to answer to anyone or explain your comings and goings.

Is it 'profitable?' As in will you gain followers? Doubtful, is if that is why you are here, to witness, it probably won't be very fruitful.

But it could be valuable in other ways--only you would know if you want to stay or go!

We got our garden put in this weekend. We've had a very cold spring.

We gave a friend our Baker Creek Heirloom seed catalog and he bought some unusual seeds and gave us some seedlings--snake melon, white pumpkin shaped eggplant, another white squash, several types of red and purple amaranth. The rest of the garden is in herbs and veggies, peas, green beans tomatoes, peppers. We've already picked some asparagus and should get more of that since it self seeds all over the yard.

The creative process can be so messy, so riddled with errors and wrong turns. It takes practice, or editing or retouching, redoing, to get something right. And even when completed it might not be perfection, the finest example of that art in the world today.

Some one can paint or write or play piano for years and never be the world's greatest. In TWI viewpoint, then it wasn't worth it. The end result had to be 'the best'. They(collective TWI think) were interested in the the final product, not the process. The process is never a glamorous 'witness.'

Plus it can't be regulated. That was even worse in TWI world.

The process of creating a vision or idea alone has to have value to the artist. In TWI when was any process ever respected? They wanted flash and show, instant dreams, last minute miracles. Not the years of work most artists actualy do outside of the public eye.

I enjoyed reading through this again. I'm still writing and am e-published in romance short story and novella length. And just getting that miniscule amount done has taken many hours and alot of learning, much of which isn't creative at all!

And did I mention the time that has to be put in? Impossible to do with the TWI scedule we followed while in.

We knew nothing of any of it until we read it here after we left. We thought there were 'smear' rumors about VPW. We were small ( 800 pop) town twig coords and missed alot of the rumors etc because we didn't get into the big city except for occasional branch meetings. Never heard of the adultery paper.

We were naive and gullible and thought we were moving the Word like it hadn't been known since the first century.

I wasn't thrilled with the Drill Baby Drill decision, but I thought--maybe there are more and better safeguards to prevent disasters.

Guess not--or if there are, the regulations didn't require their use.

This company can in no way pay for the damage they've caused.

My brother is trying to go down there with a film crew. He's a documentary/evironmental filmer with a wildlife biology background, often picks up jobs with big companies as a camera man. He wants to film and spend his non work hours volunteering.

We made our own laundry soap out of Fels Naptha soap, washing soda and borax. I used this recipe: homemade laundry soap .

Makes 5 gallons at a time, lasts forever. Cleans just great and no one in the family is has skin reactions (3 family members get excema from laundry detergents). Did I mention CHEAP? About $3 for 5 gallons. Ace Hardware will order us the Fel Naptha soap so we don't have to pay shipping, the rest we can find in town.

After a meeting with a bunch of wows and wow vets I was alone in the back of a kitchen getting my coat off a hook. Local corps guy came in and said he was leaving and gave that obligatory 'good bye' kiss. Quick kiss, every meeting involved kisses good bye with the guys, very common at Way events.

Corps guy says. "You can do better than that." True I could, I was engaged at the time and so was HE. Nor did I find him even a little attractive. Plus his fiance was a friend of mine. My fiance was in another state.

Funny, I never mentioned that to anyone at that time, it's like I wiped it away immediately. Never thought about it, went to his wedding without a thought. Wasn't until years later I thought, huh???

Some years later, different big meeting, I had my first baby and had to nurse during a break. Took a folding chair to a corner, used a blanket since I was dressed up and all that. Baby was hot and fussy and I wanted to take the blanket off but I could not get rid of this twig coordinator guy who followed me. Finally went to ladies' room and sat on a toilet to nurse, so comfy. Same guy later that day tells me that he needs more sex than most men. Ack! I'd suspected he was trying to get a peek earlier, but 'renewed ' my mind from thinking evil of a believer but after this I was shocked into thinking he was just creepy. This time I did tell my husband who had a word with the guy to leave me alone. He left me alone.

Perhaps isolated incidents and both pretty mild, but perhaps both these men were more 'tapped in' to ministry sexual activity than I was.

We had talked about leaving two years before we did, I wanted to leave but hubby didn't know where else we would go, what we would do. So we stayed and things just got worse and worse--being watched for a mistake or an error so we could jumped, the threat of loa always over our heads. Knowing the limb coord would back our HFC up, that we had nowhere to turn, knowing they(leadership) were trying to divide us(I knew, hubby didn't figure it out until the end).

We spent a long vacation visiting my family, a thousand miles away from fellowship, with people who were thrilled we were there, glad we could get there(my dad was terminal). We had the best time, our kids played with my sister's kids for hours, nothing special, swimming, playing badminton. Hubby helped my dad replace the deck(actually did most of it). Low key and pleasant. It was the first time we'd really relaxed in a couple years.

Then we returned to our home, the fellowship. The contrast was huge--how cold they were to our kids, to us, how demanding. They didn't love us or like us, there was no joy--which we had seen with my 'natural man' family--and we finally were able to see that.

After we left the load of stress that lifted was amazing. No way we would ever go back to that.

What the writer of that letter doesn't get is the deep and abiding thankfulness exTWI feel about being FREE of that culture of bullies.

Both good times and bad times are better out of TWI, away from people like that cruel letter writer and their ugly, harmful doctrine.

One of my kids painted the inside of their bedroom door to look like the Tardis.

I figure I've done something right as a parent.

Great advice on finding a wel! I didn't even know where to start!

We are in the Rockies and won't be able to plant until May, and that is with cover at night and during cold snaps. Last year we had 3 hail storms in June, toward the late afternoon when noone was home to cover, so our garden never really recovered, though we picked up some overgrown plants at the garden center.

Hubby bought 4 of those hanging tomato planters at the hardware store so that will be fun. I plan to plant more broccoli and green beans because they freeze well and everyone enjoys them. Lots of salad greens, too. Onions and garlic grow well, and culinary herbs. Basil for pesto.

I wish we had a well! Water during gardening months gets expensive! The garden areas we started last year are not raised beds, and we've sure noticed the difference. Or maybe we'll try mulch. I've been thinking that my old house probably had a well once(built 1904) but have no idea if we could find or revamp it.

You do somthing that maks you happy, Roy. Enjoy your day!

Maybe being right or finding the right sect isn't that important. Perhaps the important part is how you treat yourself and others, no matter what label you put on it.

People post about the 'kinder, gentler sweetie pie ministry' but I don't believe it. Not while they still hold to the same doctrines about illness and death, not when they never apologise or try to reconcil with those they've hurt with their doctrine, not when they still have former members demonized for make believe issues like negative believing.

Massive heart attacks are just that, massive and fast. Sometimes there is nothing anyone or medical help can do to save that life. My bro in law died of a sudden widow maker heart attack, and he'd had a physical just a month before and got a clean bill of health, a fit outdoorsy guy. Gone in minutes.

The TWi expectation that you would have revelation--know the future-- to keep something from happening is bizarre and impossible for a human. Know future events? Really, we can guess guess, speculate, look at experience--but we don't know the day and hour. We can't know the future. We are humans! Insane to hold that type of expectation and to demonize those who didn't pull it off and have that 'victory'.

Impossible expectations. Its like those wacko groups that withhold food from a baby because its crying. Impossible expectation, cruel and unhealthy. Then they wonder why their 3 month old weighs 7lbs and isn't thriving. Somebody must be possessed!

Don't miss how small children were treated in the branch/fellowship as one step ahead of possessed.

Don't miss no system of grievance to deal with bad leadership.

Don't mise fake friendly conversation after fellowship, where the co-ord was salivating to get something to hang on you.

Don't miss fake friends, period.