The Truth About “The Truth”.

I am an old bird who’s been around the block a few times. I should have had my childhood analyzed and wrapped up in a pretty pink bow by now.

Well, not quite.

As I age, the more knowledge I collect, the more I understand why things are the way they are. But certain things keep coming back up, like a powerful circuit wired on repeat.

Of course, divorce, abandonment, and rejection all come with their own set of neurotic issues. But what happens long-term when your parents divorce and one of them turns to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and completely disconnects from his first two children?

My dad was in his late thirties when his first marriage failed after fifteen years. My brother and I were fourteen and twelve. It was 1986, and we were both heading into puberty.

Not the best moment for your world to fall apart.

Both parents became absent. They allowed themselves to completely check out while going through their own neuroses, leaving us pretty much alone to raise ourselves.

We survived, for the most part.

We grew up way too fast, got jobs to help out, and systematically dropped out of school.

Mom was the first to find someone new, a divorced man from her work with two kids of his own. We were fifteen and sixteen by then, and his kids were fourteen and nine. We all moved into a large home in Aldergrove and became the functioning dysfunctionals.

Dad took a very different path.

It was a woman from work who believed in “the Truth,” and Dad, like most men in love, would have done just about anything to get the girl. So he went to an elder at the Kingdom Hall and began his studies—about the end of the world, Armageddon, and how he could be welcomed into the Kingdom.

We saw him as brainwashed, blindly following the rigid rules and stressful regulations of his newfound faith.

Hope, ritual, and fear.

To us, it had all the markings of a cult, except this one came with the tagline: “the Truth.”

The saddest part was that as he became more committed to his faith, my brother and I seemed to become less and less a part of his life. We were “worldly people,” and my father receded into a doctrine we didn’t understand or believe.

But my brother and I tried to remain open and loving over the years. We wanted Dad to be happy. After all, this was the man we had looked up to all our lives.

Personally, I understood some of his pain after the divorce. I wanted both my parents to move on and find their own versions of happiness.

But for Dad, happiness seemed to mean isolation from us.

Eventually, he began dating within his religion and was introduced to the woman who would become his wife, my stepmother. With her came a stepsister, one year younger than me.

I wanted to know them. I met their JW friends. I supported the marriage and tried to get to know his new family as best I could.

But slowly, our contact went from once a month to once every six months.

I remember living with my then-husband when Dad and my stepmother came over to tell us the good news: she was pregnant at forty-four with my little brother.

I was twenty-four and wanting to start a family of my own, so I was genuinely surprised.

But once he came along, he was the apple of my eye—at least until I had my own kids.

As their faith became stronger, though, it seemed increasingly important to protect their son from outside influences. And I was one of those outside influences.

I wasn’t really treated like a sister or even a daughter. I was someone who might negatively influence the new, good family unit.

Over the years, life threw me a few curveballs, but my father’s help always seemed to come with conditions based on his biblical beliefs.

I remember when I left my abusive partner. Dad told me I could stay with him until I got back on my feet—but only if I agreed to Bible studies with him.

It was always like this.

I sought his approval. He saw an opportunity to teach me “the Truth.”

So I went along.

At first, I figured I could learn something interesting about his version of God and religion as a whole.

And this wasn’t the first time Dad had gone searching for belonging or answers. During my childhood, I remember him exploring all kinds of things—the Torah, the Koran, Buddhism, yoga, aliens, earthly energies. He was always reading, searching, trying to figure things out.

I am certain I got this philosophical yearning from him.

At the Kingdom Hall, Dad did things called “talks,” which I actually thought were pretty cool. They would take a modern topic and use their interpretation of the Bible to explain it. Cloning, for instance. Or migration.

He had a talent for writing, which is probably why he progressed through the congregation until he eventually became an elder.

And I couldn’t help feeling proud of him.

I knew it was something he wanted.

But isn’t he supposed to be proud of me?

That is something I don’t remember hearing from him.

The things I strived to accomplish, the goals I set for myself, the travelling, the languages, the education—none of it seemed to mean much to someone waiting for this world to end.

No matter how hard I tried to make him see me, it felt like another failed attempt.

In his eyes, I was a lost soul who couldn’t find her way.

An eternal child, lost because I was blind.

But here’s my truth.

Dad lost out.

He lost out on watching me become a pretty interesting person.

Once I married my current husband, we quickly had two beautiful children whom we raised while travelling throughout the world. They became unique, open, incredibly loving human beings.

And he doesn’t really know them.

They are his own flesh and blood.

Instead, he chose his brothers and sisters in the congregation, the meetings, the teachings, and a belief system that gave him structure, purpose, belonging, and perhaps the self-worth he had been searching for all along.

Maybe that is what I understand differently now.

After a broken heart, a divorce, and low self-esteem, perhaps he was looking for certainty.

And they gave him certainty.

They gave him rules.

They gave him belonging.

They gave him answers.

They gave him a way of dealing with the stresses of this lifetime and the promise of something better afterward.

But from where I stood, the price was his family.

The older I get, the more I realize that faith is not something you can push or force.

Faith is faith because it comes naturally.

I don’t have to disagree with someone over their beliefs as long as those beliefs bring them peace and don’t require everyone around them to believe the same thing.

What troubled me was that I never saw my father truly happy.

Ever.

What I saw instead was an agitated superiority toward people outside his faith. He seemed to need the belonging, the validation, the reassurance that he had figured something out the rest of us hadn’t.

And perhaps that is why he could never give it up.

During one visit, Dad and my stepmother were talking about their friend Rebecca. I eagerly listened, waiting to hear what had happened to her, until I suddenly realized they were talking about Rebecca from the Bible as though she’d been sitting at their kitchen table five minutes earlier.

I remember thinking: Do they have any idea how this sounds to someone who isn’t religious?

Probably not.

For years I hoped Dad would wake up.

The likelihood of that happening became pretty low.

Eventually, I realized it might be better for us to cut and run.

And it wasn’t only my brother and me.

My stepsister became pregnant out of wedlock, and our parents threw her out before the baby was born.

My little brother grew up, and when aspects of his life conflicted with the church’s teachings, he was out too.

My older brother rarely speaks to them.

And I still wonder what the appeal truly is.

Maybe it is belonging.

Maybe it is certainty.

Maybe it is having people around you constantly reassuring you that you’ve figured out the system.

Maybe it is power.

Or maybe it is simply easier to live in a world where all the enormous questions have already been answered for you.

I don’t know.

But I do know this:

Nobody knows what happens when we die.

Not really.

Today, I believe in God. I just don’t believe any one religion has all the answers.

Sometimes I imagine a lineup at the golden gates, and somehow I’m standing just ahead of Dad.

I’d turn around, look at him and say:

“Oh hey, Dad. Good to see you!”

He’d be pretty upset about that, I think.

Or maybe we’d both just laugh at how little either of us actually knew.