"As servants of Jehovah, we rightly want to look our best, which means dressing in a way that is neat, clean, in good taste, and appropriate for the occasion." - God's Love ch. 5 pp. 50-61

 

Yeah that's my thigh. It was spring "Sprit Week" at the school I work at.  Everyone is a little down and stressed out.  We have state exams for three days starting next week.  Spring break feels like its forever away. We needed this week of funny outfits to ease the stress.  On twin day, I dressed like one of my thirteen year old student, blue sweatshirt, black skinny jeans and sneakers.  Today is black and white dress up day.  So I put on my black skirt, and white blouse.   My short black skirt.  My “not witness approved”  short black skirt.  In all actuality, the skirt really isn’t that short, but according to JW’s views of dress and grooming, showing your knees is immodest.  Granted, some of the girls broke the rules but typically not at meetings or out preaching in filed service.  I never broke the above the knee is bad skirt rule until I officially left.  Here the cover of  a brochure of what the Watchtower Society would like good witnesses to wear:

Take note, the women and the girl in the picture are both wearing skirts to their shins.  I detest skirts that length.  When I was a Witness and a Pioneer, I lived in below the knee pencil skirts.  I wore them everyday to work because I would preach after work, and I had no time to go home and change. I had to make 70 hours of preaching every month, no time for slacks!  At our meetings in was below the knew skirts, and I often wore blazers or cardigan sweaters.  Also high heel shoes were a must!  If I wasn't wearing heels, a nice witness boy would never ask me out.  

Towards the end of my stint as a Witness, when I  didn't care about the stupid dress and grooming rules anymore, I brought a few fit and flare dresses that were above the knee and I wore these dresses with flats.  I think the dresses were cute and comfortable, I'm sure I was on the rumor mill for the congregation because my knees showed.

Yeah, so my knees showed today.  And I had school sprit, another witness no-no.  Oh well. 
 I broke the short skirt rule shown here: 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”

I wish it were spring.  Well, technically it is spring, March 26^th.  What?  It’s March 26^th!?  Honestly,  I was going to write about the nasty cold winter weather we continue to experience here in the North East and how it is really making me feel blah.  I was going to write about how lately I feel like I’m getting anxiety and maybe the reason why I feel this way is because I’m not planning on going to the memorial of Jesus’ death that the witnesses believe is the most important meeting of the year.   I really don’t want to go and I feel guilty about it.  I wanted to tell my readers that my mother lately has been annoying, for example, last night she went on a rant about me not loving her enough, which is a total fallacy as I would do anything for her.     I also wanted to elaborate on the fact that I felt like I was in a rut in my relationship and we had a discussion and everything is in the making for major (good) changes in the future.  I wanted to mention that I’m confused about spirituality and I’m having the feelings of agnosticism are creeping in again.  I wanted you to know that I feel like I am disappointment to everyone   in my family.   I wanted to also say that all these little stressors are causing me to have a dull headache and occasional nausea that doesn’t seem to go away.   But I don’t want to elaborate on any of these things because today is March 26^th, 2014.

Tomorrow is the twenty first anniversary of my baptism as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.   I was a mere twelve year old girl who dedicated her life to the Watchtower Society.  Baptism wasn’t my choice, a year before I was baptized my mother was baptized, that very day she told me I would be getting baptized the next year.  I had no say in the matter.  When you are twelve, you do what you are told.  I was a good little witness for at least the next sixteen years.  A few years before I turned thirty something happened, something changed and I knew I wasn’t living up to my potential.  I wasn’t giving my career my all as I was trying to half heartily be a full time minister at the same time.  I also realized I wanted to be a mother and I knew I couldn’t raise my children to be witnesses.  I looked at all the innocent faces of my students and coworker’s and I realized god wasn’t going to kill all of them at Armageddon.  I knew I believed contrary to what the Society told me to believe.  But in the eyes of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the vow I took at the age of twelve would bind me to them.

 Now a lot of choices I make now no matter how normal or trivial it seems, makes me second guess myself and makes me feel guilty.  They have taken captive of my mind and it is my job to get it back.  It is my goal to continue deprogramming myself, and hopefully next year at this time will be better for me.   Warm weather is coming, and things will get better.