The whole truth and
nothing but the truth so help me God
I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately. Though I am a million times
happier than in my ‘previous’ life, I am still finding it hard to find purpose
and meaning on my journey and I’m just trying to figure it all out. In doing a
personal inventory of my emotions, it has occurred to me that a lot of my anger
and doubts still come from my past and former religion. It’s an everyday
struggle to keep the voices I still have inside my head quiet so I can stay
tuned to the real world around me.
When I was sixteen and became a Jehovah’s Witness I was young and very impressionable.
I was also vulnerable and an easy target as I was trying to make sense of why
God caused me to have a disease and plague me with such an unsettled childhood.
I was trying to make some sense of something I couldn’t understand. As a young
person, I always believed there was a God, but did not know how to find him and
I thought becoming a Jehovah’s Witness was the answer. Turns out it was a way
to hide from my painful reality that I now know was the way I was truly made to
live. But as it turns out, it wasn’t always easy.
Almost immediately they enforced a fear of God, and a strict set of rules that
were acceptable and unacceptable to the God of their understanding. And for someone who was longing for answers, I
learned to silence the inner voice inside that told me to follow my heart and
to lead an authentic life, and I did so until that voice was almost destroyed forever.
From early on, they taught me that being a homosexual was wrong and that God
hated this kind of lifestyle and would punish anyone who pursued it. It was
almost as if they felt demons were present in people who were gay and viewed
them as lesser human beings because of their sexual orientation. In fact, I
learned to judge everyone. I judged the world! If you weren’t a Jehovah’s
Witness, you were nobody. As you can imagine it was an awkward feeling
outwardly judging gay people when inside I was crying inside, desperate to lead
a life I knew in my heart I was meant to live. I am so ashamed to say that I looked
down upon, but only outwardly, on people who practiced a homosexual lifestyle,
yet it was never from my heart.
I tried to kill myself by studying the bible more and by searching and
searching and searching for something that I was missing. Something that could
maybe cure me from this ‘wickedness’ I had inside. They even taught me to “pray the gay away”. Well, it didn’t work.
In fact, it only made it worse. It was like the more I prayed to God about my
inner thoughts and feelings the more I was moved to take action to live a pure,
genuine life. I missed out on so much when I was a part of that society.
Spending time with non-Jehovah’s Witness family members was frowned upon. I
missed out on the joys of Christmas and the happy times that we as humans
celebrate each year. I was taught that such practices were pagan and that God
detested anyone who partook in such events. I learned to judge the world and
everyone in it and thought more of myself than others only because I felt I was
living the ‘right’ was and everyone else was living the ‘wrong’ way. What a
hypocrite! The man I was on the inside was totally in conflict with the man I
presented to the world. You can imagine the torment I had!
So I did it, I got married. I married a beautiful woman and thought that it was
God’s master plan for me. I thought somehow that it would make it go away and
that God would make sure to remove the man I was deep inside and replace it
with one I thought he wanted me to be. I loved my wife, from the bottom of my
heart, and I still do and I think I always will. But there is a big difference in
being ‘in’ love and loving someone. And that was the issue. Though I loved her
dearly, she was not able to give me what my inner, genuine, and real self
craved and wanted so badly. But I stuck with it, slowly dying inside and losing
the color in my heart.
If I were to be completely honest, it was harder leaving all my friends who
were Jehovah’s Witnesses than it was leaving my ex-wife. Deep down I knew she
would be ok. I knew that she would bury herself into religion and follow the
course her parents taught her. And she has a lot of support from friends. But I
had built, what I thought were genuine, unconditional friendships over the 7
years I was a member of that organization and it almost killed me to leave
behind, people whom I associated with regularly and did many great things with
it. I must stress to you that when you are a JW and you leave to pursue a ‘disgusting’
way of life, you are shunned. I was instantly dropped like a sack of potatoes from
the lives of people whom I thought were my friends. I even had two people I
viewed as my parents who have not spoken to me since that day. The pain I have
in my heart is great, and it still bothers me to this day, which is why I thought
I should write about it. The love I was shown by fellow members was conditional
to one thing; that I continue to live a lie and do as God expected of me.
I remember the pain I felt driving away from my home, never to return to the
life that I so desperately loved yet so desperately hated all at the same time.
But I was tired. I was tired of hiding. I was tired of judging. I was tired of
seeing the hypocrisy and the twisted
things that happened behind closed doors that rather than bring me closer
pushed me so much further away. I don’t miss the half-hearted smiles of genuine
Christians who pretended to like my all because it would affect their status in
the congregation. But most of all I was tired of hating myself.
I want you to stop for a moment. Imagine you’re looking in the mirror. You are
all dressed up to go from door-to-door and you slap a nice smile on your face,
like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. But when you look in your own eyes,
all you see is sadness. And you see a light that is burning, but only by a
thread. Imagine looking at yourself in that mirror and saying ‘I hate who you are’.
That was my pain.
That was my reality.
I became so sad that it left me wanting one thing; to die. And I almost did. If
I didn’t succeed in taking my own life then I would surely die of a broken
heart. And thank God neither of those things happened, though I was very close
to the first. In my darkest hour and the lowest of my lows, I reasoned with
myself and with the God who I believed in. “I
would rather die a thousand deaths at the hand of my creator, than to live one
more day in the life he made me to live and be so miserable. If God is love,
then God did not want that.” They would tell you that that’s the devil
talking and that I was justifying my unclean lifestyle. But you know what? I don’t
care anymore. I am the only person who will have to be accountable for the way I
live my life, and I don’t think any human being has the right to tell of make
someone feel that the way they are living isn’t good enough. It was so exhausting
judging people and looking down on everybody but myself. I think of all the
time I wasted!! It makes me so sad. I try and live with no regrets and somehow
pray that that whole experience made me a better person somehow. I still
believe in God, I have to. It only makes sense as he is the one who helped me
get through all of this. And it’s funny how it’s working out because when I practiced
a JW way of life, I always felt my prayers were unanswered, but now that I am
ME, it’s like every single one gets answered.
I have a freedom now that none of you reading can understand. I was a mighty
lion, destined for greatness trapped in a cage. Now I am free to roam and leave
my mark behind me and touch people’s lives in ways I never could going
door-to-door with a bible. I am living a good life by example and not one
according to someone else’s rules and agenda.
I didn’t write this blog to turn you all against JW’s, and I believe there are
good people in all religions. The two people I mentioned being like my parents are
two of them. I needed to let this go, and this is my way of doing it. Writing
down for the world to see, in hopes that the darkest most desperate pain I felt
can be of light or courage for another. My heart is happy, my health has
improved and I am content with who I am. I still have my sad days when I miss
people from my past I wish would still talk to me, and see that I am not evil,
and I am not something to be looked down upon. I am a human being not an animal. What makes me even sadder is that when I
left to pursue my new life, I had four Jehovah’s Witness males contact me. Each
one in their own way told me they admired my courage and that they too were
gay. But their fear of disappointing God and their fellow believers ruled over their
hearts. I pray every day for them and
hope that they can find it within themselves to embrace reality, and not live
in a dream world where they feel inadequate or demonized.
I walk into my bathroom every morning now. I look in that mirror and I tell
myself that I am beautiful. I tell myself that I love myself. And I smile from
ear to ear, with a heart full of gratitude that I was one of the lucky ones. I
was able to find myself after almost losing myself. I see a light, not a
darkness in my eyes that fills me with so much joy. But most of all, I am no
longer in conflict within myself. I am happy. When I say I’m happy, I mean I am
happy. No more lies. Only truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth so
help me God.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
“I have
decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden
to bear.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Peace
and Love,
Jamie
Leigh Francis
xo
