Authentic Thursday week 4

All I can say is it's a darn good thing I don't blog for a living. I can barely write one post a week, forget trying to write every day!

This week I'm going to blast through 17 years of my life (1980-1997) and hopefully by next week I can bring this "story of my life" up to the present.

As I was saying last week, I began discussing the Bible with a friend (who later became my husband) which lead to my studying the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses (the religion he was raised in.) I spent the next 17 years as a devout JW, actively participating in all of the aspects which are associated with it, including going door to door and preaching about the Kingdom of God. It feels really strange to be writing about this topic. Having since left that religion, I have typically maintained a certain amount of privacy or anonymity when it comes to actually naming my previous religion. My beliefs now are quite different from when I was a Jehovah's Witness, though I have no regrets for having once been one.

In hindsight I can see how I desperately needed something very absolute during that part of my life. I was completely lost and the structure provided by this religion gave me something safe to believe in. It's interesting to me now when I realize how often times, when we have a profound awakening associated with religion or God, we can assume this is the ONLY way to God. This is the ONLY truth. I no longer believe this, but I understand this is how it occurs to many believers.

In my 2nd marriage I gave birth to another child and my husband also had 2 daughters from a previous marriage. Counting my son, his 2 daughters, and the daughter we had together, we raised 4 children. I can honestly say we did our best to provide a loving home to our children. At the same time we were in so many ways completely dysfunctional!

During those years I started tapping into my creativity. I did alot of sewing for my daughters, and also began painting furniture for our home. I would find old junk furniture and paint it an antique green or pink (of course!) and eventually I attempted to paint roses on them. This eventually lead me to selling my painted furniture to stores throughout the Los Angeles area. I started doing this as a business in 1994.

Ok, I think that will be it for now. Next week brings a rather drastic turn of events, so please come back :)

Much Love,
Susan