I was involved in twi from about the age of 12. I was in for 23 years before I left. That is more than half my life when I look back and do the math.
It's a lot of lost time. I never got a degree. I have never owned a house. I have maybe seven years of credit history.
I'm doing OK. I started my own business last year doing what I love and I am showing a profit for this year as of last week.
But I have regrets about that time I wasted. I could have been much further in my career if I wasn't involved in twi. I gave up doing what I am doing now because the hours for a caterer/chef don't work well with class schedules and ministry events and fellowship times. I never went to culinary school like I wanted.
But I am doing my best to make up for lost time now.
How do you deal with the regrets without getting bitter?
Edited for auto correct auto misspellings
There's always something to be anxious about. There's always something to be thankful for. Right here. Right now. The qualities of our lives depends largely on which of those things we decide to pay the most attention to. Yup. We lost a lot of time to TWI, but we didn't lose it all. I didn't learn these things in the context of TWI. I learned them in the context of failed marriages.
I was involved in twi from about the age of 12. I was in for 23 years before I left. That is more than half my life when I look back and do the math.
It's a lot of lost time. I never got a degree. I have never owned a house. I have maybe seven years of credit history.
I'm doing OK. I started my own business last year doing what I love and I am showing a profit for this year as of last week.
But I have regrets about that time I wasted. I could have been much further in my career if I wasn't involved in twi. I gave up doing what I am doing now because the hours for a caterer/chef don't work well with class schedules and ministry events and fellowship times. I never went to culinary school like I wanted.
But I am doing my best to make up for lost time now.
How do you deal with the regrets without getting bitter?
Edited for auto correct auto misspellings
When your heart is heavy and your thoughts are less than kind,
the attitude of gratitude is your best state of mind,
just count your many blessings and God's perfect peace you will find.
Don't be so hard on yourself. Sounds like you've accomplished a lot since leaving twi. Nobody's holding a stop watch in your face. Anything you ever got from God you still have, and now you don't have to filter it through...THEM! Set goals. Focus on what you actually have; not what you left behind.
When your heart is heavy and your thoughts are less than kind,
the attitude of gratitude is your best state of mind,
just count your many blessings and God's perfect peace you will find.
Don't be so hard on yourself. Sounds like you've accomplished a lot since leaving twi. Nobody's holding a stop watch in your face. Anything you ever got from God you still have, and now you don't have to filter it through...THEM! Set goals. Focus on what you actually have; not what you left behind.
Some wonderful insight. Twi is not the only place people get sidetracked from the life they ultimately want to build. We're wiser for the experience regardless of regrets we might have about being hoodwinked.
It is a fact that young adults don't often have much of an idea of what they want to make of their life. Experience, and hard times build patience and wisdom.
On balance, can you move forward in the direction you want to go in life? If so, that's a lot to be thankful for. :)
It took a couple years to sink in, but now I know full well I wasted the prime of my life with that little cult and now have little to show for it. Not that I am in bad shape, or worse for the wear. Since I can't have the time back, I am in full pursuit of all the things I want to do with my life. And many of those things are me/my family oriented, not ministry centric.
I do regret sacrificing to much to the furtherance of a destructive cult. I am remorseful for promoting them and have come to grips with what I did. Though, I was deceived and thought I was promoting the things of God. I think that was one of the biggest blows.
So in short, me and the family are living our lives to the fullest and pursuing happiness.
Don't be so hard on yourself. Sounds like you've accomplished a lot since leaving twi. Nobody's holding a stop watch in your face. Anything you ever got from God you still have, and now you don't have to filter it through...THEM! Set goals. Focus on what you actually have; not what you left behind.
I agree with John here.
It's easy to focus on things you've lost, whether they're impossible to measure or very specific objects.
It's not always easy to STOP doing that, but try to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and work with
what you DO have. twi is not WORTH the energy of continually obsessing about once you're clear.
There's a saying that "living well is the best revenge." I'm not sure about that, but it sure beats
Losing time is like losing sleep; once it's gone you can't get it back. All you can really do is try to make the most of what you have now. Don't dwell on the past. (unless it's to figure out where errors were made and correct them.) Don't project too far into the future. (Unless your future has specific planning requirements) It's a tall order at times, but, that's all we can do.
(I always think of THIS song when this subject comes up.)
Great topic.....thanks! When I left TWI I had a part time job and I would come home to this rocking chair and rock and think about my life.
I was devistated, completely. I felt like the best years were lost...the years where people developed their careers, had families.
I was out WOW, Doing classes, running a fellowship. Before I went into TWI I wanted to be a music teacher. After TWI, I didn't get a degree, but I had opportunities to teach some lessons, even directed a choir for a period of time and played for a short time in a band. Two years ago I ended doing music totally just because I felt it was time to do that.
I had always wanted to write a book since HS...and of course that never happened in TWI. Last summer, I wrote my first small novel and I have just continued to write. I have a mentor now, a university professor, and I am writing plays. Who Knew? Certainly not I. But, I'm loving this new area of interest. It's like a hobby for me.
I only know that I had to let go of the past, let go of what might have been, and just reach for the future, even though I had no idea what the future was suppose to look like.
We "get" each other. We know the wounds, the hurts and this is a great place for healing. We can talk about whatever we want to talk about, get support, love and acceptance.
I wish you well in your journey of life.....it's worth it.
At times I look back in horror, that I got out of college, and spent 10 years basically ignoring my own life in order to hustle for the way, and be at their beck and call 24/7. I wasn't even in the corps, yet felt obligated. When I finally left, I took stock, and realized I had no career, no family, no bank account, and a life sapping disease to boot.
That was about 25 years ago. Since then I've married, dealt with, still dealing but doing ok with the disease, and managed to carve out a so called career in animation, mostly at Disney. None of it was easy, but in an odd cosmic twist sort of way, the decisions I made over the years in the way, landed me at the doorstep for me to change my life for the better. I have no idea what would have happened if I hadn't been in a cult, but somehow I've wound up exactly where I had dreamed of, in spite of losing years.
We "get" each other. We know the wounds, the hurts and this is a great place for healing. We can talk about whatever we want to talk about, get support, love and acceptance.
I wish you well in your journey of life.....it's worth it.
Hey, let's not forget one valuable skill we learned from our TWI experiences. Once we were finally on to its selfish and shameless exploitation game, we learned how to smash a cult into itty bitty pieces. That's no small accomplishment. Of course, the fact that TWI chooses inbred ijjits as its leaders helps that process.
I used to pray for God to "multiply my sleep". This would happen if I had maybe 3 hours before I had to get up and didn't want to be tired all day. I first heard this done by another believer. Don't know how ministry wide this was, don't know if it actually helped the situation, though it seemed to at times. Anything's possible. So...
Is it also possible for God to "multiply" our middle years? That way, even though time has been lost, with God's intervention, we could feel as though we got a full life, even though time was lost somewhere. Just a thought.
Seems to me that in the seasonality of life, autumn arrives for everyone who lives to see it. The midpoint of life is a "God-given" rite of passage into deeper reflection. We have never had as many elbows in our road to reflect on as we do now. With this comes a season of regrets. A season of noticing patterns. A season of humiliations. A season of beginning to reap what we’ve sown...even if we didn’t know what we were sowing. Some have called it a “Wilderness Stage.”
The way we respond to this varies, but a common response is fight or flight. It is also a strong invitation to enter that wilderness and change the way we see our selves in the world…again. Maybe even prepare for winter. Where words like redemption and atonement become useful again. We spend the entire second half of life healing (or not) from all the damage of the first half…physically too. But if we are to turn lead into gold to some greater degree in this life...this is when it naturally begins. Harder to start in winter.
Sadly, much of society and culture seems mostly geared to eternal summer and spring til the end. Very little to support or prepare for the shifts of the second half. “Permission to transform/grow up” does not come cheap, if at all. Especially when the grown-ups in control are neither. I thank God these forces (the seasonalities and such) seem stronger than society or culture. So we find our way through the seasons anyway. As if “God springs forth in a desert.”
…
Anyway, here is what I remember from an old “Spiritual Geographying” exercise I learned: Be still. Breath. Simply note the 3 worst times of your life and the 3 best times of your life (or 5 or more of both depending on age). Reflect. Notice the relationships. Some share it with everyone. Some share it with a friend. Some share it with God alone. That sort of thing.
I can't say that I really "lost time" with TWI, at least in the sense that other posters have described it. I don't regret the time I spent as a Twig Leader; and I was able to refuse every invitation to join the Corps or go WOW. I just didn't see them as part of my life trajectory. I finished my PhD and worked in industry for 28 years. (I now work for a small chemical research firm.) I married later in life than most (41); but that was due to my inability to choose, more than anything TWi did. In fact, I met my (now, ex-)wife while we were both in TWI.
Lost money? That's another story, though I honestly don't begrudge giving thousands of dollars in ABS. God's taken pretty good care of me.
A dear friend said that Holy Spirit showed him his life like a 100-year football game, and therefore (he is late 60's) he is still in the 3rd quarter and the 4th quarter is where most of the major plays are made. So it should be with us. I am 66, went deaf, lost my husband, went deaf, am pretty close to destitute but the 23+ years I spent in twi, although they were "prime" years are receding in their proportion of my life the longer I live. I don't know if I will have a 100-year life which my friend is expecting (He comes from a long-lived family), but my dad and his brother lived into their 90s and late 80's, respectively, and my mom's side had some good long lived people there as well, so I am thinking I still may have time for a touchdown or two.
I know I am responsible for living the best I can in the moments I have right now, and that the weight of the sins of unforgiveness, bitterness, and regret are too heavy to bear.
God has not forsaken me and I still have hope and trust God for His kindness and protection, His care and concern. I am so very very thankful that God got me out of twi. WIthout Greasespot Cafe (and WayDale and Transchat) even though I was kicked out of twi I still might be kicking myself for my spiritual weakness which caused me to be "marked and avoided"!!! But because of God's mercy and kindness and the work of all the kindhearted people who have shared their/your life stories, I have been able to keep growing with the Lord and in my life with the Holy Spirit, but it definitely requires leaving bitterness etc. behind.
A dear friend said that Holy Spirit showed him his life like a 100-year football game, and therefore (he is late 60's) he is still in the 3rd quarter and the 4th quarter is where most of the major plays are made. So it should be with us. I am 66, went deaf, lost my husband, went deaf, am pretty close to destitute but the 23+ years I spent in twi, although they were "prime" years are receding in their proportion of my life the longer I live. I don't know if I will have a 100-year life which my friend is expecting (He comes from a long-lived family), but my dad and his brother lived into their 90s and late 80's, respectively, and my mom's side had some good long lived people there as well, so I am thinking I still may have time for a touchdown or two.
I know I am responsible for living the best I can in the moments I have right now, and that the weight of the sins of unforgiveness, bitterness, and regret are too heavy to bear.
God has not forsaken me and I still have hope and trust God for His kindness and protection, His care and concern. I am so very very thankful that God got me out of twi. WIthout Greasespot Cafe (and WayDale and Transchat) even though I was kicked out of twi I still might be kicking myself for my spiritual weakness which caused me to be "marked and avoided"!!! But because of God's mercy and kindness and the work of all the kindhearted people who have shared their/your life stories, I have been able to keep growing with the Lord and in my life with the Holy Spirit, but it definitely requires leaving bitterness etc. behind.
You have more kindness,forgivness and understanding in spiritual things than twi ever had or will.You have been a rock here at GSC.
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Steve Lortz
There's always something to be anxious about. There's always something to be thankful for. Right here. Right now. The qualities of our lives depends largely on which of those things we decide to pay the most attention to. Yup. We lost a lot of time to TWI, but we didn't lose it all. I didn't learn these things in the context of TWI. I learned them in the context of failed marriages.
Love,
Steve
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excathedra
i don't know what to tell you dear jj
i was a bright (smart) shining star
things didn't turn out the way i thought they would
i'm not bitter, just sad
i know people who believe their lives were definitely enhanced by joining the way
i'm not one of those
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johniam
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Rocky
Some wonderful insight. Twi is not the only place people get sidetracked from the life they ultimately want to build. We're wiser for the experience regardless of regrets we might have about being hoodwinked.
It is a fact that young adults don't often have much of an idea of what they want to make of their life. Experience, and hard times build patience and wisdom.
On balance, can you move forward in the direction you want to go in life? If so, that's a lot to be thankful for. :)
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OldSkool
It took a couple years to sink in, but now I know full well I wasted the prime of my life with that little cult and now have little to show for it. Not that I am in bad shape, or worse for the wear. Since I can't have the time back, I am in full pursuit of all the things I want to do with my life. And many of those things are me/my family oriented, not ministry centric.
I do regret sacrificing to much to the furtherance of a destructive cult. I am remorseful for promoting them and have come to grips with what I did. Though, I was deceived and thought I was promoting the things of God. I think that was one of the biggest blows.
So in short, me and the family are living our lives to the fullest and pursuing happiness.
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excathedra
my "earthly" ahem family have always been asking if i murdered anyone, if i did etc. etc. they say it out of kindness
i do wish i wasn't 55 (almost 56) and worried about getting a job after being laid off
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WordWolf
I agree with John here.
It's easy to focus on things you've lost, whether they're impossible to measure or very specific objects.
It's not always easy to STOP doing that, but try to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and work with
what you DO have. twi is not WORTH the energy of continually obsessing about once you're clear.
There's a saying that "living well is the best revenge." I'm not sure about that, but it sure beats
the alternatives.
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chockfull
The only thing you can do about lost time is make up for it.
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JavaJane
Thanks, guys!
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excathedra
you're welcome, but i still feel sorry for us
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waysider
Losing time is like losing sleep; once it's gone you can't get it back. All you can really do is try to make the most of what you have now. Don't dwell on the past. (unless it's to figure out where errors were made and correct them.) Don't project too far into the future. (Unless your future has specific planning requirements) It's a tall order at times, but, that's all we can do.
(I always think of THIS song when this subject comes up.)
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Ham
Los time..
I dunno.
Every decade I've been something different..
The way (incorporated and copyrighted) did not steal that from me..
well.. I just wish they would graciously assume the bill.
Christ.aren't------------------------------------------ they good for something?
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newlife
Great topic.....thanks! When I left TWI I had a part time job and I would come home to this rocking chair and rock and think about my life.
I was devistated, completely. I felt like the best years were lost...the years where people developed their careers, had families.
I was out WOW, Doing classes, running a fellowship. Before I went into TWI I wanted to be a music teacher. After TWI, I didn't get a degree, but I had opportunities to teach some lessons, even directed a choir for a period of time and played for a short time in a band. Two years ago I ended doing music totally just because I felt it was time to do that.
I had always wanted to write a book since HS...and of course that never happened in TWI. Last summer, I wrote my first small novel and I have just continued to write. I have a mentor now, a university professor, and I am writing plays. Who Knew? Certainly not I. But, I'm loving this new area of interest. It's like a hobby for me.
I only know that I had to let go of the past, let go of what might have been, and just reach for the future, even though I had no idea what the future was suppose to look like.
We "get" each other. We know the wounds, the hurts and this is a great place for healing. We can talk about whatever we want to talk about, get support, love and acceptance.
I wish you well in your journey of life.....it's worth it.
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hiway29
At times I look back in horror, that I got out of college, and spent 10 years basically ignoring my own life in order to hustle for the way, and be at their beck and call 24/7. I wasn't even in the corps, yet felt obligated. When I finally left, I took stock, and realized I had no career, no family, no bank account, and a life sapping disease to boot.
That was about 25 years ago. Since then I've married, dealt with, still dealing but doing ok with the disease, and managed to carve out a so called career in animation, mostly at Disney. None of it was easy, but in an odd cosmic twist sort of way, the decisions I made over the years in the way, landed me at the doorstep for me to change my life for the better. I have no idea what would have happened if I hadn't been in a cult, but somehow I've wound up exactly where I had dreamed of, in spite of losing years.
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excathedra
lovely reply. thanks.
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JavaJane
Isn't it great we have a place where people get us? Thank God for the GSC.
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OperaBuff
Hey, let's not forget one valuable skill we learned from our TWI experiences. Once we were finally on to its selfish and shameless exploitation game, we learned how to smash a cult into itty bitty pieces. That's no small accomplishment. Of course, the fact that TWI chooses inbred ijjits as its leaders helps that process.
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frank123lol
Well if God truly makes a way where there is no way,then we somehow get it back,or has been said the quality is there.
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johniam
I used to pray for God to "multiply my sleep". This would happen if I had maybe 3 hours before I had to get up and didn't want to be tired all day. I first heard this done by another believer. Don't know how ministry wide this was, don't know if it actually helped the situation, though it seemed to at times. Anything's possible. So...
Is it also possible for God to "multiply" our middle years? That way, even though time has been lost, with God's intervention, we could feel as though we got a full life, even though time was lost somewhere. Just a thought.
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excathedra
it's a nice thought
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sirguessalot
Seems to me that in the seasonality of life, autumn arrives for everyone who lives to see it. The midpoint of life is a "God-given" rite of passage into deeper reflection. We have never had as many elbows in our road to reflect on as we do now. With this comes a season of regrets. A season of noticing patterns. A season of humiliations. A season of beginning to reap what we’ve sown...even if we didn’t know what we were sowing. Some have called it a “Wilderness Stage.”
The way we respond to this varies, but a common response is fight or flight. It is also a strong invitation to enter that wilderness and change the way we see our selves in the world…again. Maybe even prepare for winter. Where words like redemption and atonement become useful again. We spend the entire second half of life healing (or not) from all the damage of the first half…physically too. But if we are to turn lead into gold to some greater degree in this life...this is when it naturally begins. Harder to start in winter.
Sadly, much of society and culture seems mostly geared to eternal summer and spring til the end. Very little to support or prepare for the shifts of the second half. “Permission to transform/grow up” does not come cheap, if at all. Especially when the grown-ups in control are neither. I thank God these forces (the seasonalities and such) seem stronger than society or culture. So we find our way through the seasons anyway. As if “God springs forth in a desert.”
…
Anyway, here is what I remember from an old “Spiritual Geographying” exercise I learned: Be still. Breath. Simply note the 3 worst times of your life and the 3 best times of your life (or 5 or more of both depending on age). Reflect. Notice the relationships. Some share it with everyone. Some share it with a friend. Some share it with God alone. That sort of thing.
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GeorgeStGeorge
I can't say that I really "lost time" with TWI, at least in the sense that other posters have described it. I don't regret the time I spent as a Twig Leader; and I was able to refuse every invitation to join the Corps or go WOW. I just didn't see them as part of my life trajectory. I finished my PhD and worked in industry for 28 years. (I now work for a small chemical research firm.) I married later in life than most (41); but that was due to my inability to choose, more than anything TWi did. In fact, I met my (now, ex-)wife while we were both in TWI.
Lost money? That's another story, though I honestly don't begrudge giving thousands of dollars in ABS. God's taken pretty good care of me.
George
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Kit Sober
A dear friend said that Holy Spirit showed him his life like a 100-year football game, and therefore (he is late 60's) he is still in the 3rd quarter and the 4th quarter is where most of the major plays are made. So it should be with us. I am 66, went deaf, lost my husband, went deaf, am pretty close to destitute but the 23+ years I spent in twi, although they were "prime" years are receding in their proportion of my life the longer I live. I don't know if I will have a 100-year life which my friend is expecting (He comes from a long-lived family), but my dad and his brother lived into their 90s and late 80's, respectively, and my mom's side had some good long lived people there as well, so I am thinking I still may have time for a touchdown or two.
I know I am responsible for living the best I can in the moments I have right now, and that the weight of the sins of unforgiveness, bitterness, and regret are too heavy to bear.
God has not forsaken me and I still have hope and trust God for His kindness and protection, His care and concern. I am so very very thankful that God got me out of twi. WIthout Greasespot Cafe (and WayDale and Transchat) even though I was kicked out of twi I still might be kicking myself for my spiritual weakness which caused me to be "marked and avoided"!!! But because of God's mercy and kindness and the work of all the kindhearted people who have shared their/your life stories, I have been able to keep growing with the Lord and in my life with the Holy Spirit, but it definitely requires leaving bitterness etc. behind.
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frank123lol
You have more kindness,forgivness and understanding in spiritual things than twi ever had or will.You have been a rock here at GSC.
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