Daddy - What happened?

Hi kids,

Right now, Brighton you are 7. Elise, you are 4, soon turning 5 and Amelia, my little Amelia, you are 3, going on 14.
When I started these series of blogs, it was with the intention of documenting my life as it was falling apart. I didn't know exactly what was happening to me, but I wanted to remember it all so that you guys would know who your father is/was at that moment and not me trying to rehash what little my brain chose to bring to the table.

You've had the chance to see some of the struggles, the victories, the rants and the raves of my life so far. I'm sure there are many more to come after today.
I've made a lot of really tough choices in my life and I want you guys to really understand why I made those choices. I'm sure you've had a chance to hear your mother's side on what has happened in life and I really want you to be able to hear mine.

I've been wanting to hold off for as long as possible since you kids are still so young, but I'm dying for you guys to be of that age where I can sit you down and tell you my story. Sometimes it frustrates me that while I hold off telling you things that little kids shouldn't have to worry about, the faith your mother belongs to is relentless about condemning people who have broken away. I worry that you'll eat up everything they say and then completely dismiss MY TRUTH.

So what happened?

As your mother may have already told you - I was once very active in the Organization. Your mother and I lived in Kentucky and served in small congregations along the Ohio river. We tried pioneering for awhile, but that didn't stick too long before we decided that we wanted to have a family. I served as a Ministerial Servant in Greenup, Chesapeake and Sanford, ME.

During my time serving, I had the chance to see a lot of things within the congregation that most people didn't. I never really told your mother what was going on since those events were meant to be behind closed doors and Elders and MS's didn't talk of such things to their wives.
But I saw the incessant fighting amongst the Elder body in Greenup. I had a chance to see certain brothers for who they REALLY were behind closed doors.
I remember a Brother by the name of Dan Evans Sr. He was the father of Kimberly, who was a friend of Gretchen and I's. Anyways, he was the school overseer in Greenup. He was a quiet and gruff man, but behind closed doors he was a bully and had a very explosive temper. Needless to say, he was my first introduction to reality. It was amazing to see him fight and manipulate the other more "mild" and "meek-hearted" brothers to make decisions that favored him and his family.

I wish I could honestly say that he was the only person, but there were a lot of politics involved in serving in a congregation.

When Gretchen and I were serving in Greenup, we both studied with a variety of young ones there. That was our speciality, young ones.
Anyways, Gretchen and I caught wind of a party that some of our kids were attending. At this party, there ended up being a lot of drunkenness and one of the brothers ended up making out with one of our 15 year old studies - Jessica.
When I found out, I went to the Brothers. Of course, one of the brothers at that party was Jamie Evans. Dan Evans Sr. son and a fellow MS. He was PISSED - this party was at his house. He scolded me for outing him and his friends for having fun. Needless to say, I promptly reminded him that he was the one supposed to be an example since he was an MS and his being drunk and vomitting everywhere was stupid.
After that event, I was on Dan Evans Sr. hit list. We had a couple run ins later on that eventually got him removed as an Elder in Greenup. I was not popular with that family.

There was another incident in the congregation with the suicide death of an unbelieving mate of a sister in the hall. Mike.
I used to study with a young man named Caleb. Caleb was the son of Debbie. Debbie was part of the McConnell clan. You should ask Mom about Carl and Shirley McConnell. They were great people.
The McConnell family weren't very active, but they were great people.
I always liked Debbie. She was a wreck of a person emotionally, but she had a good heart.
She once asked me if I would spend some time with Caleb and study with him since Mike was an unbeliever. I agreed and I did get close to Caleb and Debbie.

After about a year or so, with Caleb and Debbie making progress, Mike was found outside on their lawn in his underwear dead due to drug overdose. This destroyed Debbie and Caleb. I felt horrible for them.
During this time of emotional breakdown for Debbie, Paul Hennecke and Paul Harr stopped by Debbie's house and counseled her about her meeting attendance.
Debbie called me crying one day and I went over and sat with her and Caleb. Debbie told me later that she had to get away from the brothers and she went to Florida with her son.
I always resented the brothers for being so stupid. These men were responsible for these people's welfare and they kicked them around.

I'm going to share something too that incriminates the family, but I have to give you my truth.

Every once in awhile, Gretchen and I would drive up to Columbus Ohio to go see Grandpa Bill and Grandma Jean.
On one particular visit, Bill asked me to help him with some PC problems. While I was working on his PC, I found that his machine was riddled with pornography.
Now this wasn't just a small thing where we accidentally get forwarded to a porn site, this was very intentional. At that moment, I didn't mention anything to Bill, but on the way home, I told Gretchen about what I saw. She started to cry in the car. It was honestly not the reaction I was expecting, but apparently this issue had happened before with her sister Rachel years earlier. Rachel had found porn on his PC and when she confronted her father, he denied it explaining that it wasn't what they thought it was. Your Grandfather Bill is a very dangerous and manipulative man.

At first, I did what any responsible brother should do - I approached Bill about it. Imagine the awkwardness of talking with your father-in-law about his porn addiction. He denied it. I gave him plenty of opportunities to get it addressed, but he denied it over and over. Gretchen and I BOTH knew he was lying.
After talking with Bill, I went to some trusted brothers in the Greenup hall as to what to do. The problem? Bill was the Presiding Overseer in his congregation in Ohio! A man of oversight shouldn't be a porn addict. Honestly, I don't care what he wants to view in the privacy of his own home, but he CAN'T claim to be holy of holies and be a porn addict. So something had to be done.

Eventually, a letter was sent to the branch for direction. A little while later, in comes Dan Houghton. Dan Houghton was a very good friend of mine and the Circuit Overseer of our circuit. I really admired the man and still do to this day. He was a guy that fought for what was right and he fought a couple battles in Greenup on my behalf, so we were friends. Anyways, on his first night while visiting our hall, he immediately comes up to me and says "Nathan, we need to talk...now."
I thought I was in trouble seeing the fire in his eyes. Once he pulled me into the B school he tells me,

"I need you tell me EVERYTHING you know about Bill Blaine."

Apparently, the branch reached out to Dan Houghton to investigate these porn allegations. What I didn't know was that Bill was already on Dan Houghton's radar for other reports of abusing his role as an Elder. Apparently, before Bill moved from Middleport to Columbus OH, he wrote a 60 page letter to the branch offering his opinions of the brothers serving in that congregation. There were also complaints of emotional abuse and reports of Bill's domineering tendencies in the congregation.
Dan told me that he had been after Bill for awhile and now with my knowledge, he could get Bill removed.
After I told Dan everything, he went and did some investigations himself. Unfortunately, Dan didn't have enough on Bill to remove him.
However! Uncle Will was very much aware of what was going on. He knew that I was telling the truth, so he confronted his father and demanded that he step down.
To save face, Bill agreed to step down saying: "If that's what you want me to do."

Ask your mother and you will find EVERYTHING I just told you is true.

The reason I tell you these events is because I learned something over the years - Jehovah's Organization has scandals too. Sure, you can say that man is imperfect and Jehovah fixes things in his own time, however, I saw the rottenness of the people who were supposed to be caring for people in the congregation and saw a lot of people get hurt badly over it.
There were good people: Joe Fitch, John Stidham, Sonny Stark, Larry Ferguson, Dave Nemeth, Dan Houghton and I will never forget them for who they were.

But I was still a bit jaded. "How can Jehovah allow this? Aren't these terrible people appointed by Holy Spirit?"

After the drama in Greenup, Dan asked Gretchen and I to move to Chesapeake since they needed some young blood. Serving in Chesapeake was pretty good. They brothers were good there. I think they were just getting too old to deal with dramas, thus needing more young people to carry the load.
During this time, with no new battles to fight, I think things began to sink in. I had a chance to sit back and think about the things that had happened.

I can't pinpoint the exact day, but I knew something was wrong. Something inside me was changing and it scared me.

Once you were born Brighton, we decided that it was time to move back to Maine. Reason one was because we didn't want you to have a Kentucky/Ohio education. But also too, we wanted you to grow up with other boys your age with parents we trusted. Aaron Lederer, Josh Stevens and Reuben were all having children and they were my childhood friends and we thought that would be a better upbringing.
However, that wasn't the only reason. I was tired of being in a foreign circuit. I wanted to be back in an area where I had friends. So we packed up and moved back to Maine and served in Sanford.
While in Sanford, once again, I got to see a side of the Organization that I didn't like.

The Sanford congregation was a very rigid congregation. In my opinion, that congregation has been under the influence of Earl Lederer for way too long.
See, that's one of the things that I learned from serving in each congregation. The congregations are molded by the Elder body. Their passion, convictions, ideals, enthusiam all roll down to create a congregation feel.
However, negative things get passed down as well. Criticisms, haughtiness, personal opinions and rigidness.

It didn't take long to realize that Sanford wasn't too much different than Greenup, except they went the other direction. Instead of being corrupt, the Elder body in Sanford was very taxing and policing on everyone. Everything was scrutinized very carefully and it became oppressive.

While I was serving in Sanford, I went through a crisis. I began to feel that Jehovah's Organization wasn't the God Driven chariot I thought it to be. For me kids, I felt like it was just a group of people trying to do what they thought was right. And what was considered "right" changed depending on the congregation.

There are many reasons why I divorced your mother. But one of the biggest issues I had were with people's opinions being powerful enough to force you to be something you don't want to be or change something you don't want to change.

When growing up, I was really into fantasy games and movies. I remember Brian Lavigne and I would have to sneak out to see the Lord of the Rings movies in the theatre so as not to offend anyone. I hated that.
Your mom also took a lot of personal issue with the fantasy video games that I used to play. She thought they were demonic because they had magic in them. I completely disagreed because none of those things made me want to start practicing some weird ritual, it was just make believe, but the Witnesses don't like that at all.
Me and my friends used to have to keep it very quiet when we got together to play computer games, including Aaron Lederer. We were in positions of responsibility and we were trying not to offend anyone.
Sure enough, a older sister in the hall caught wind that one of the guys was playing a game that she found offensive in nature and he was pulled downstairs. He didn't feel safe anymore to play those kinds of games, which I thought was stupid. IT'S A GAME folks.
It was only World of Warcraft.

One of the things your mother and I liked to do was to create activities to get people together. When we were in Ohio, we had thrown a couple parties to get young ones to associate. We were the cool couple. So we had experience throwing together dances, formals and games to keep people active.

When we moved to Maine, we did the same thing. We first threw a formal and rented the Wells rec center. It was a good time, but it was remarkably difficult to get it going simply because the brothers gave us a bit of kickback on the idea. They were always a bit paranoid of SOMETHING happening at these formals and it took a lot of work to make people comfortable with the idea. We had done it plenty of times before down South, so we were ready.

The formal went without incident and everyone had a great time.

However, the second event we coordinated was the one that changed me forever.

Much like the 3 or 4 times we threw it down South, Gretchen and I decided to get a group scavenger hunt. We had a great time when it Kentucky doing them. We had thrown one in Greenup, one in Chesapeake and drove out to Russellville to attend one out there.

The idea was basically was that you'd have a series of small teams formed. With each team, you'd be assigned a mascot. This mascot was generally something really silly like a pink bucket, an ugly umbrella or something absurd like it.
Now, each team was issued a camera (this was before digital cameras were accessable)
Now that they had a camera, they had a list that was split into two objectives:

a) Get an item on the list and bring it back. Each item was worth a certain amount of points based on difficulty.
b) Get a picture of your team doing something specific, but the mascot must be in the picture.

Really, participating in the games were optional, but even the older ones would come just to sit around and eat and talk while we waited for the teams to come back.

When we got the event planned, we invited everyone from the congregation in Sanford to attend. Overall, in a congregation of 90-100 publishers, there were only about 30 that attended that event. The discouraging part was that there were only 3 Ministerial Servants that attended to oversee the event - me, John Stermer and Erik Christensen.
A great time was had by all! We had so much fun scrambling around Sanford/Springvale getting items and pictures and people were really happy. Mission Accomplished!

and then...

Apparently, some of the Elders had gotten their hands on the scavenger hunt list and had some "questions" for me.
So at the end of one particular Thursday night, Earl came up to me and asked if he could speak with me downstairs. When I get downstairs, it wasn't just Earl, it was Doug Edson and Aaron Montagna as well.
Not good.
Earl began the meeting with the typical, "We have some concerns regarding this scavenger hunt and we thought we should bring these things to your attention..."
As the meeting went on, the brothers were "concerned" over the fact that I had placed my brothers in danger. Doug Edson had looked up some random AWAKE! article on the dangers of a dare.
I was really upset.
Earl Lederer continued, "Nathan, we're just concerned about someone getting hurt over one of these dares."
He pulled a task on the card, "You have a task to get a team picture of someone washing a random person's car. What if that person had a gun?"
I replied to the effect of, "Earl, we are Jehovah's Witnesses. We talk to strangers EVERYDAY not knowing they have a gun. This was not a dangerous task. I didn't ask people to go to a seedy bar and slap a random person across the face."

Earl said "But it could have happened..."

I was now angry.

I pointed to each of them and said, "I invited each of you to the scavenger hunt, but you did not attend. Which is perfectly fine. However, you are now counseling me on dangers of something when you were not there. I have thrown this event numerous times down South where I have had Pioneers, Elders, MS's and even Circuit Overseers attend and we've all had a good time without anyone telling me that it's wrong and dangerous."

I was upset because they were counseling on personal opinion and they weren't even there to see it.

After I was done with that meeting, I was never the same.

I went to John Stermer and Erik Christensen and apologized to them. I was embarrassed that they had already been counseled over the whole thing too. It wasn't fair and your mom and I had done nothing wrong.

From that moment forward, I wasn't right. I was angry and had lost all faith that the Organization was really "THE TRUTH". Why?

Well, I guess it was a combination of things. Maybe it was because I knew I was being counseled on someone's opinion and NOT based on biblical teachings.
See, after that night, I also began to listen to things from the podium with new ears. I started to hear more and more things that I knew weren't the voice of Jehovah and more a local mindset. After a while, I was getting more and more angry with the local brothers. They were doing what they thought was right, but they were pushing it down the publishers throats. That's when it occurred to me that it happens EVERYWHERE. Greenup, Chesapeake, Kennebunk and Sanford.
Every congregation is led by men who are doing what they think is right and some push it upon the publishers in the congregation using the podium as a channel.
Brian used to tell me of a congregation he once served at where the brothers thought colored dress shirts were inappropriate and distraction and therefore forbidden. I remember the local needs part where David Noble gave a talk about how people who live in another congregations territory were going against Jehovah if they didn't stay in the assigned area.
Are these men really led by Jehovah? After that, I said no. If they are not led by Jehovah then why should I be molding my life around what other people want from me?

Once my faith was compromised, it was all downhill from there. I stepped down as an MS and I just stopped going to meetings.
I remember the day that I decided to stop going. Gretchen had been gone all week visiting her parents down in Ohio. When Gretchen got back, someone had apparently told her that I didn't go to one of the meetings.
When Gretchen asked me what was going on, I told her that I wouldn't be going to the meetings anymore. She lost it. She started to scream and cry. It was so loud that our neighbors ended up calling the cops thinking I was beating her.
That was awkward.

After I knew my faith was dead, there was no going back. I didn't see it as truth anymore. It was just another religion, just like everyone else. Not "THE TRUTH".

At first, your mother was mad at the Elders. They had stumbled her beloved husband and she knew they were wrong. For the first year, they tried to apologize and offer shepherding calls but I didn't want them. I honestly felt like there was nothing to apologize for, they did exactly what Witnesses do - they preach their own opinion and understandings just like everyone else the Witnesses condemn. I didn't hate them, but I was bitter over knowing that my entire life was kinda a lie.
After a year, Gretchen and I started to fight more about the faith. She wanted me to get over my issues and go back. She thought it was over just the incident of the scavenger hunt, but it was something much more. It was that I didn't believe it was right anymore.
We couldn't have a date night without fighting over it all. Disagreements became bickers, bickers became debates, debates became arguments and arguments became fights.
I was tired of being wrong. I was tired of being "sick". I was tired of fighting with Gretchen.
Then came the day I was driving home from work and I knew my marriage was over. I told Gretchen that day that I didn't love her anymore. It was true. She wasn't exactly what I wanted and leaving the faith didn't make that any better.
After that, it just went all downhill.

During all this time of me coming to reconciliation with the person I was to become, came the sickness. I was emotionally in turmoil and I felt like I had no idea who I was anymore. Everything I once thought was right was suddenly someone else's ideas and really not my own.
When I realized that I couldn't be who I wanted to be around Gretchen, I asked for a divorce.
In all honesty, I knew that I had changed. It wasn't fair to Gretchen that she had to be stuck with me when I was the one that didn't want that lifestyle anymore.
Maybe it was the last bit of respect/love that I could offer her. Let her go free so that she could have a redo like I desperately wanted.

And there you have it.

I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. Maybe if the scavenger thing never happened, I would have never changed. But ya know, live does that. Live makes you change and you can't be afraid of that. Sometimes crap happens and then best you can do is survive.
That's exactly what I did. I changed to survive.

It was all a very hard thing to deal with. It was hard to disappoint my family. It was hard to hurt Dave and Rita and everyone else who ever cared about me. But I had to change for me.
I have only one life and I am responsible for how I live it, so why should I be accountable for how others think? It didn't make sense.

As you've probably already read, if there was ever one constant when I made these changes, it was how it would affect you kids. You will always be precious to me and I care very much about your health and how you turn out as adults.

I don't care what you become, provided you are happy.

I just hope that as you grow up, you'll see the balance of mine and your mother's worlds.
I don't want you kids being painted into a corner just because we never gave you options in life.

Now that I'm molding my new life, I hope you can look at me as a model and a good example of how to be a good human being without HAVING to be in THE TRUTH.