By Jamie Parker | News Editor
They come to every neighborhood now and then, knocking on your door, and then asking if you have accepted the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now we all have different reactions to this question. Some of us are polite and honest, some are rude, and others lie to get the process over with. But what we never really consider is, what it is like to be on the other side of that situation. Well over this spring break I interviewed my cousin, Anessa – an ex-Jehovah’s Witness – about what it was like to be part of a religion that not only is so involved with how their message gets across, but also how different it was to be raised in that type of environment. However during our interview, I found out much more than that. I found out what it was like to be raised in a very isolated, strict, and overall suffocating environment, and what it is like to leave something like that.
Jehovah’s Witnesses – or “JW’s” as many of them call themselves – believe a lot of the same Pagan beliefs that most of the main world religions do. One main difference of JW’s is that they do not celebrate any traditional holidays. Birthdays are not celebrated, because in The Bibles stories the person whose birthday it is typically dies, or something tragic happens in general on that day. Or that is at least what the JW’s believe. For other holidays such as Easter and Christmas there is a different reason. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus’s birthday was not in fact on the day of Christmas, and that he was also not resurrected on Easter Sunday. They also believe in the idea that certain holidays have been way too commercialized and no longer hold the religious value that they were originally intended for.
In Anessa’s case, she was not born into this religion like many children are. Her mother, Jennifer, was raised a JW but left when she was a young adult to marry my father’s cousin. After they married, they had Anessa, and everything was going smoothly. That is until Jennifer’s mother passed away when Anessa was very young. That is when Jennifer decided to go back to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and she wanted to bring her family with her. Unfortunately it did not work out this way, and Anessa’s parents got divorced not too long after that. The problem with this was divorce is heavily frowned upon in the church, so Anessa and her mother were walking on eggshells when they first arrived back. Also since Anessa’s father was not a Witness, any interaction with him was also frowned upon, and even discouraged. Some other parents in her Kingdom Hall even went as far as to not let their child socialize with Anessa because of the divorce. I found out that until she was about seven, Anessa was told that her father wanted nothing to do for her and already had a new family. Little did she know that he had actually been trying his hardest to see her, but was being brushed off by her mother, and church.
When Anessa was a young child, she loved going to the Kingdom Hall. They went to Kingdom Hall twice a week, as well as what she referred to as “family study night,” multiple times a week. For family study night there were videos oriented towards children that taught the religion, and advertised what was expected of them in the church with “Model Kids.” Like most children that are involved in any religion, Anessa enjoyed the social aspect of going to church as well as being involved with it, “The friends I made were the reason I was excited to go.” At one point, her father found out about the intention the church had to homeschool Anessa and decided to sue for full custody. Jehovah’s Witnesses almost always homeschool their children. For them, college is not important and is highly discouraged. They mostly want their children to go on and spread the message of God to others. He lost the case, and therefore she began getting taught by her mother every day until her high school graduation. On the bright side, by the time she began homeschooling, her father had finally been able to get in contact with her and would take her out with his new girlfriend, and her daughter for a few hours at a time, then go back to her mothers. That was essentially her only contact with people outside of the church. While Anessa has sworn off homeschooling for her own children, she does not think it was an all bad thing.
In fact, there were many things about being a JW that she truly enjoyed. The main one she loved was the sense of community was very strong and tight-knit. “I felt as though I had a family away from my own, because I wasn’t close with any of my dad’s side of the family. I mean that’s where I met Connor, and he may as well be my brother.” Through the church she met some friends that she still holds dear today. She also became close with some children who would soon become her step-siblings, and even though today they are still involved in the church, she loves them more than anything in this whole world.
But as her teen years progressed, she started doubting her religion and its philosophies. It all started when she got a job at a restaurant when she was seventeen. If you have ever worked in a restaurant you would know that going from an extremely sheltered environment, to that, must have been a huge eye-opener. And it sure was. “I started making friends, and it was the first time I was every exposed to anything outside of my family…and then I met a guy. I had to sneak around my mom to talk to him. It was harmless; we would eat lunch together on our break, and talk.” But one day her mom found her phone and all of her conversations she had had with that boy. That was when everything really started to go downhill.
To Be Continued…
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