Bramble

We had one bad health situation pop up the first year after leaving TWI. Family and non TWI friends and aquintances were so helpful and kind. If that situation had happened while in TWI, our creepy leadership would have been involved and in charge. No one would have brought us a frozen lazagna or sent flowers and a card. The bad health would have been due to our inner wickedness. Since then, every time something bad has happened in life, big or small, I have been thankful I wasn't experiencing the situation in TWI, where it would be met coldly and with harshness, even heart wrenching things like the death of a parent. We've also had many wonderful and happy things happen since leaving, so I guess it balances out.

Excercise is also not that easy for some people to get. Neither my hubby or I can just hit the gym. He has a back injury and has to be careful of the type of excercise he does. My illness effects my heart and lungs so it is difficult to stay with in a healthy target heart rang when excercising, plus when I get tired, say, of walking, the stress causes the heart rate to go up. We have found water aerobics with a non Nazi instructor who doesn't mind when we drop to a walk etc rather than the more vigorous excercise the rest of the class is doing. It doesn't harm joints, and our instructor is great about mentioning alternatives that don't stress the back etc.

I'm short, so maybe that is the issue. It hurts! I also have 'speckled"results due to the calcium leaching immune disease I have, but the doc now knows it is not cancer, though it could make a cancer clump harder to find.

Cool Waters, my husband is type 2. His medication is covered, but one thing that has been really helpful has been a diabetes 2 support group through a local clinic. They did a dietician workshop that is ongoing, get feet inspected, lectures on shoe and sock types, get free flu shots. The clinic is not a high rent one, it takes medicare/caid etc and has a sliding scale. I'm not sure who funds it, but hubby pays nothing for this group. If you can get you doctors on board you can perhaps resubmit/fight with insurance to get necessary coverage. We had a claim denied--a hernia surgery! But after resubmitting and filling out more detailed forms they did pay. It is in your insurance companies best interest to provide diabetes preventative medicine, because when kidneys fail etc, the costs are astronomical to the insurance company.

That says a lot, right there. Being a cruel abusive authoritarian figure is a good thing, huh? Plus, there are many accounts of LCM not being mentally stable. Great role model, Allen. Hope it works well for you in life.

allan w, you're hateful because you treat people like crap while professing to be a great believer in your god. If you are some type of leader in your church then it is no better than TWI of the nineties. In fact, you remind me a great deal of LCM.

I'm not comfortable in groups,especially large ones, but alot of that is because I am basically shy and always have been. Since TWI...no groups for long. I do belong to PTO and a local writer's grup, but neither of them are intrusive, if you know what I mean. I as far as belief, i considr myself a solitary, though now and then I'll be part of an area wide festivity, or meet up with a couple girlfiends for a purpose. Sometimes we just drink coffee, but then I usually learn alot. Some posters here--eek. My insincts tell me to run away and hide the children! If I was looking for a church I would look at the kindness and heart of the person, of which there are several on this site

Let's not forget that what in the real world is considered 'bullying' is in TWI world considered speaking the truth in love, giving someone a kick in the pants, and the leader who does it often is sooo spiritual, rooting out weakness yadayadayuck.

I think that just because someone posts about the horrors they went through in TWI, and their struggle to overcome such, does not mean that in their real life they have not 'overcome' to the point they are leading productive, healthy lives. The purpose of this board is to expose the underside of TWI, afterall. I get the impression sometimes that posters that are new to this site see people who have huge horrible experiences in TWI as being some type of one note, frozen in time, when that is not the case. Sometimes I think 'get over it' really means 'shut up I don't want to hear it'. If someone really cares about someone who is obviously damaged and hurting, wouldn't they try to help in some small way? Try to get to know them, at least?

SafariVista--maybe allan has given up on stalking Temple Lady for being Mormon, since he gets alot of flack for it, and is seeing how he likes stalking overweight women instead. ~shudder~

I'm weaning off steroids, 5 mg per week. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to translate into losing a pound a week! I am back on the dash diet(the low sodium diet) where everything has to be cooked from scratch and dinners out limited. Hopefully I will loose the water and pounds that came on with the steroids and no lung stuff will make me go back on steroids. I lost 25 lbs last year on dash, mainly because hardly anything tastes good! I also plan to do water aerobics, which I really like, but will see how if effects energy levels, breathing etc. What a drag.

It sounds like a really good school. Shellon. Ours also has academic activities like Odessy of the mind, Brain bowl etc. I know my kids are more challenged and enjoy this school very much. All the classes are excelerated and none of my kids are bored, which was a real problem before, especially in Math. And they actually have less 'busy work' homework than they did in the regular school.

Shellon, is there anything in your school district like a charter school? My kids attend a Classical academy, but it is through the public school system, so no tuition. The classical schools go from k-9th, they hope to start a highschool soon. Other than being a public school it sounds quite a bit like the private school you are looking at. It also reminds me a great deal of the private school I attended. as a child. I think i had even more homework, though. The Christian school sounds like a good one.My biggest reservation would be social--some really religious families won't let their kids hang out with kids from more secular families. This is probably more an issue in middle school that grade school though.

In TWI 2 being fat was due to unfaithfulness or slothfulness or hardhearted ness or, devil spirits or....all bad. I recently have been on steroids and gained a pound a week, even though my diet has not changed. Sigh. Hey--my cholesterol is great, though!

I love Bagpipes I'm glad you had the break through and are alive with us today... I have a lung disease along with asthma which can cause severe asthma symptoms, to the point that h2o levels become low...then you pass out. My pulmonary doc would never say to just give into it. I can't imagine having a doctor (was it a pulmonary doc?)that would do that. Sounds dangerous, even deadly. Glad it all worked out for you, but if I should have a severe attack that I can't handle with home equiptment, I'm off to the hospital. Breathing treatments, oxygen, some steroids...I can live with those. I'm not at all sure I would survive hours and hours of a severe attack and don't plan to find out. One hour with home medicine(nebulizer etc) is all I'm willing to give. I really hope someone out there with severe asthma doesn't try to ignore medical advice.

Sunnyfla--do you really think that the posters on this board aren't 'living now?' Surely most of the posters have families, marriages, children, jobs, hobbies, friends, activities. That is an odd way to think of people on a message board. What makes pain go away?

Where I lived there was our twig(no corps in it) A twig that was all corps, people with families who were not doing corps assignments, and the twig area corordinator's twig. The All corps twig was not friendly, they stuck to them selves. Thye left with the loyalty letter Since they had not been much apart of our lives, we barely noticed. Our Twig area guy was a nice guy. He stayed, so it seemed logical for us to stay also. For awhile we got way stuff and Chris Geer stuff, don't remember when we quit getting both. we just kept on doing our small town twig. We were pretty isolated. Even when the ministry was at its high population, we were in an outlying area.

That day in April...at first all we heard was that LCM had stepped down--and we were happy. Maybe we even thought that a way would be paved to go back, become not M&A...everything the way it should be. Later in the day we heard more, about the adultery. At that time we thought it was the one time affair. My husband was furious. Really. We left TWI because we were sick of being dogged about piddly little crap. In his thinking, adultery was far worse than the piddly stuff that our lives were made miserable about. He went out to trim some bushes and had a heart attack. Yep, that's a day I won't forget too soon. I even remember what we had for dinner--marinated round steak, steamed veggies and rice. As far as all the anger--Anger was the magic that got things done in TWI. Tantrums got results, if you were in a leadership situation. Being spiritually angry was a godly habit, it meant you were super spirtual and could see things others couldn't. Control of others through anger, threats and name calling--yep, that's the TWI I knew pretty well. Still see it here. I'll bet alot of lurkers in TWI are familiar with it. I also think there are a few posters that have the hearts of trolls--they stalk other posters, derail threads, try to get the focus on themselves because they have the truth and all...they are ugly people. It is probably fun for them to get others upset!

Right after leaving TWI we did two things. We took out a car loan(gasp!) for a really nice vehicle, one that wouldn't require weekend fixing to keep running for a long long time. We had been taking turns going to the school parent meetings, because they were on a HF night. Now that we were out, we could go together! My husband just laughed as we left for that first meeting together, and said he didn't even feel guilty.

In the mid to late nineties our teachings were scheduled--one night was for Way mag(current), one for Wap class, whichever segment we were on, and one form the SST. Teaching were supposed to be 10min long, and we were to hit the high points of the Way material. It was all review. I did a teaching one night where I took off on something, and taught, not a review. After that I had to clear all my teachings with the HFC prior to the Fellowship! Oh--the teaching I did really blessed alot of people in the fellowship that night. One guy, who had been in our twig way out in a small town was all nostalgic--'remember when we had twig at your little house?' Yeah, back when it was friendly and kind and fun...

We were not corps and lived in a remote area during POP. We really didin't move closer to way corps til the early nineties. We didn't have access to POP nor did any of our fleeing corps aquaintances fill us in. We read POP in 2000 after we left TWI.

George--your post seems to reflect my marriage pretty well. I am all about what belief makes me feel like. I like it that way and see no need to try to go back to the 'must renew your mind' stuff. My hubby is the same guy I married, but instead of fellowships, teachings etc he spends his time on wood working, gardening and cooking. Religion or beliefs are not a big interest for him. He'd rather be playing with the scroll saw or fiddling in his garden. I can't see any difference in his temperament through the years. I can't see that I'm a whole lot different either, in temperament or habits. Well, I'm happier than I was back in our last TWI years, but I tend to run on the sunny side.

Thanks Belle. Funny-- I threw away my wap stuff several years ago, but that was all so familiar.

IMO the idea that you can control and make someone else believe the way you want them to believe by reproof, correction, digs, jabs, arguements etc comes straight from TWI. If the stakes are high enough, you might be able to get someone to pretend they believe the way you think they should--but what they do inside their own mind could be quite different. A few years after we left TWI it became obvious that we had different interests in things spiritual. Hubby is agnostic (and doesn't try to control things with his agnosticism or what ever ), I'm pagan. There are no digs and jabs over belief or unbelief in our home. If there were--well, I had years of experience in TWI of hiding what I really thought. I suspect it would be an easy habit to fall into again. Glad I don't have to.

Amazingrace, we (hubby and I) have had to reason out alot of things over the past few years since leaving! The first three or so years were full of it. I can remember when we went to a Methodist church, and there was a big wooden cross on the wall. It was like my eyes couldn't see anything else! I spent the whole service thinking about the cross thing. Now we don't spend so much time figuring things out.Whew!