Bramble

Even really bad times--the death of a loved one, or health/financial issues--are made better simply bcause your are not in TWI and don't have to listen to their hard hearted blame-the-victim junk. False leaders who don't care about you, false friends who would throw you to the wolves....what kind of life is that? While proclaiming how ugly and dark the non TWI world is, they became even darker than that world they so despise.

It's been wonderful to see how much of a greasepot you are NOT!

TWI was very comfortable breaking marriages up. We had HFC who worked hard to bust up many couples, including us. We'd hear the reports how the spouse that left was possessed etc. After we left TWI we had some contact with those couples and learned about how one spouse was targeted for elimination while the other got the strokes. Exactly what swe had been experiencing for several years. Marrige was temporary if it became inconvenient--a believer can't live with a possessed unbeliever. So dangerous you know.

I wasn't Way Corps, but after my kids were born I thought about going back to teaching and was counseled that the public schools were really 'dark' and I'd be better off not going back to teaching...so now years later I am starting grad school, planning to go back to teaching. Most of the time I think I was so stupid to not us the degree I had. The jobs I've had in the past decade have either been preschool or teaching related(I taught processes/training for a large retail business). But quite honestly--teacher's get raises and have much better benefits than I have in the retail or preschool business.

One thing I changed, and it makes a huge difference--I don't keep people in my life who want to use me or put me down or control me. If I get a weird feeling about them, or they do something 'off' that makes me uncomfortable, I don't give them a bunch of chances and try to reason away their behavior like I did with the precious 'household' believers in TWI. Life's too short. There are other people out there who can be real friends. And since leaving TWI I've only met a few of those types--they must all be drawn to groups like TWI! The friends I now have are real friends.

Made myself STOP speaking in tongues when I was anxious. Got forbidden books from the library on subjects like feminism, myths, divine feminine. Read alot of fantasy novels. Bought lots of music to listen to. Got a big dog and a bunch of cats and a big messy garden. Bought the kids Harry Potter books. Took a Wicca 101 seminar at the New Age store. Made friends. Filled my garden with quartz and jasper from rock hunting trips. Spent weekends rock hunting! Didn't fuss when the hubby filled the garage with wood working equipment and parked the car in the driveway. Let hubby stack stuff on top of the fridge. Got real Christmas decorations like Santas and angels. Own cheesy dolphin decorations cuz I like them. Have a Kokopelli pillow.

When I have a bad dream usually it does have some type of TWI theme. In one I dreamed my children were very small and I had run away to a trailer on a ranch in eastern Montana, very isolated, near where I once taught school(Nice people out there, they would have taken me in!). My husband was driving out there so we could be togther in that devilish no-fellowship-in-200-miles-vicinity place. But he came with my Fellowship coord to take the kids. Vivid dream, set on a hill with a dirt road and a stock pond--you can see cars coming a long way away because they raise a cloud of dust. Full of emotion, and similar to fears I had the last year or so IN. A creepy dream I've had more than once is here in my house, which I moved to several years after we left TWI, in a city where we never attended a fellowship. TWI leaders would float up to my bedroom window to look at me --my side of the bed is right under this window. Kind of like the creepy dead faced Gentlemen In Hush(Buffy) I've actually fiddled with combining the two scenes into a paranormal type story...but I don't really like to write dark things.

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.