My Story

The indoctrination began before I could even question it.

I learned to read at a very young age using "My Book of Bible Stories" and the accompanying cassette tapes. I would listen to the tapes and follow along in the book, word by word, page by page. By the time I was five or six years old, I was giving my first Bible reading in front of the entire Kingdom Hall.

I didn't know it then, but the theology was being wired into me before I had any ability to evaluate it.

Look at page one of that book. It teaches children that Jesus was "the first angel God made" who "helped God to make all other things." The scripture reference at the bottom? Colossians 1:15-17 — the same passage the New World Translation alters by inserting the word "[other]" four times to make Jesus appear to be a created being rather than the Creator.

But wind doesn't speak. Wind can't be lied to. Wind doesn't grieve. The Holy Spirit does all of these things in Scripture.

I absorbed this before I could read. Before I could think. Before I had any chance to compare it to what Scripture actually says.

This is how it works. By the time you're old enough to question anything, the foundation has already been laid so deep that questioning feels like betrayal.

I did everything I was supposed to do. I went to meetings. I went out in service. I studied the publications. I believed that the Watchtower was God's organization, that the New World Translation was the most accurate Bible, and that Jesus was God's Son — a created being, the first of God's creations, but definitely not God Himself.

And I never once prayed to Jesus. That would have been idolatry.

At 21, I got married. I won't pretend my motives were entirely pure — if you were raised as a Witness, you understand the pressure. So I married young, like so many of us did.

Within six months, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. We were completely incompatible. I went to my mother in tears and told her I couldn't do this. She talked me out of leaving. "Marriage is hard for everyone at first," she said.

I wanted to believe her. My parents have been madly in love my entire life. I thought my marriage would be like theirs. It wasn't.

For ten years, my ex-wife and I lived more like roommates than spouses. I retreated to the basement with a bottle of scotch. She retreated to the bedroom. We had two children along the way, and I stayed longer than I would have because of them.

I'm not proud of what came next. My marriage fell apart, and so did I. When I turned 30, it hit me that I had wasted my entire twenties being miserable — and I was on track to waste the rest of my life the same way.

So I left.

It didn't take long for my phone to start blowing up. Every elder who had ever known me, every family member — all of them pleading with me not to go. I ignored them all. My mind was made up. I finally saw my chance at freedom, and nobody was going to talk me out of it.

I wanted my ex-wife to be able to remarry without consequence. So I voluntarily went before a judicial committee and confessed what I had done. My ex was free.

They disfellowshipped me. I haven't been back to a Kingdom Hall since — with one exception.

I won't romanticize what came next. I partied. I drank. I did things I'm not proud of. I was free from the organization, but I wasn't free. I was just running.

On February 16, 2008, I met Linda. She would eventually become my wife — and more importantly, she was the reason I was ever exposed to the Gospel at all.

Linda didn't try to convert me. She actually avoided religious discussions with me, partly because she didn't feel like she was "living right" herself at the time. But her family would change everything.

In June 2010, Linda's son Joshua got married at Calvary Chapel Bangor in Maine.

Joshua had been a heroin addict who nearly died on multiple occasions. By all earthly measures, he should have been dead. But he wasn't. He had graduated from the Bible school at Calvary Chapel and was getting married in the church. He was completely transformed.

At that wedding, I heard the Gospel preached by Pastor Ken Graves. I also witnessed something I had never experienced before — not in all my years as a Witness.

The people there had a genuine love for each other. Not the performative warmth of a Kingdom Hall, where everyone smiles but watches each other for signs of weakness. This was different. It was real.

I didn't think about it too much at the time. But it stayed with me.

Since that wedding, Joshua has been ordained as a Calvary Chapel Pastor, founded Calvary Chapel Eldoret in Kenya, and started Great Commission Ministries — a global missions organization that is currently building homes for orphans and women in danger. The same man who should have died from heroin is now bringing life to some of the most vulnerable people on earth.

That's what Jesus does.

A few weeks later, we had a suicide in the family.

It was the first time I had ever known anyone who took their own life. And something about that death sent me into an existential crisis. I couldn't stop thinking about my own standing with God. Where was I? What happened when you died? What if everything I'd believed was wrong — but what I was starting to hear was also wrong?

I had heard Ken Graves preach again at a local Calvary Chapel. I had been reading the Bible — not the New World Translation, but a real Bible that Linda had given me. And what I was finding in Scripture didn't match what I had been taught for 34 years.

The evidence was becoming undeniable: the Bible taught that Jesus was God.

But I was terrified. What if I was being deceived? What if praying to Jesus really was idolatry? What if I was about to commit the ultimate blasphemy?

I was at work, sitting at my desk.

I had been wrestling with this for weeks. The Scripture was clear. But I couldn't bring myself to do what I knew I needed to do.

Finally, I made a decision. I was going to do something I had never done in my entire life: I was going to pray directly to Jesus.

Not through Him to the Father. To Him.

I bowed my head and prayed silently:

I said "Amen" in my mind.

The instant I finished — literally, the very second — the phone on my desk rang.

I was startled. I picked up the phone.

On the other end, there was no voice. Instead, there was a sound — something like music, but not quite. It was otherworldly. Beautiful. I can't describe it accurately. It played for about 15-20 seconds.

Then the line went dead.

As a career IT professional, my first instinct was to find a rational explanation. But I knew by the sounds that it wasn't a fax machine or modem — and it wasn't a person either. It was something that defied explanation.

I called the number back.

I got a recording: "This line is not in service."

I did a reverse lookup on the number. And what I found shook me to my core:

The phone number had been registered with the phone company by a local Christian school but never activated — on my 18th birthday, over a decade earlier.

In that moment, I knew Jesus was real. I knew He had heard me. I knew He had answered.

But I didn't know what I was supposed to do next.

My mind raced. The phone call came from a Christian school. Maybe that was the next clue? Maybe I was supposed to go there and find something — another sign, another message, another piece of the puzzle?

I called Linda and told her everything. The prayer. The phone call. The impossible phone number. The Christian school.

She asked me to come to her house after work so we could talk about it.

That evening, I sat on Linda's back deck and explained everything again. I told her about the prayer, the phone ringing the instant I said Amen, the sounds on the line, the reverse lookup, the Christian school, my 18th birthday.

And I told her I didn't know what to do next. I was ready to drive to that school and start searching for the next clue.

Linda just smiled calmly and said:

So I did. Right there on that back deck.

And what happened next — I can't even begin to describe it adequately. It was the experience of being welcomed into the family of God. It was overwhelming. Wonderful. Absolutely indescribable.

The closest I can come is this: it felt like being completely loved down to my very core, unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

Looking back, I see how God orchestrated that entire day.

The first prayer was a desperate plea for confirmation: "Show me you're real." And Jesus answered instantly — before I even finished the word "Amen" in my mind. He answered with a sign so undeniable, so impossible to explain naturally, that I couldn't dismiss it.

But the sign wasn't salvation. It was confirmation. It gave me the faith to take the next step.

The second prayer was surrender: "I believe. I'm a sinner. I need you. Come into my life."

And Jesus answered that one too — not with a phone call, but with His presence. With that overwhelming sense of being loved and welcomed. With the Holy Spirit bearing witness to my spirit that I was now a child of God.

He was saying: "I've been here all along. I've been waiting for you to call on My name."

And when I finally did — really did — He was faithful.

I wish I could tell you that everything got better after that. In many ways, it did. I found a church. I was baptized. I married Linda. I finally had peace with God.

But there was a cost.

My entire family is still in the organization. My parents. My siblings. My children. My aunts, uncles, cousins. All of them.

For a while, my parents bent the rules to stay in contact with me. But when I tried to take my children to the church I was attending, everything changed. In the eyes of the Witnesses, I went from "disfellowshipped" to "apostate."

The rules are different for apostates. They are forbidden — under penalty of being disfellowshipped themselves — from having anything to do with me.

When my daughter was 16 and my son was 19, they were both baptized as Jehovah's Witnesses. I wept bitterly when I heard. I knew what that meant. They were now bound by the same rules. The wall between us had become permanent.

Today, my family only contacts me when there's a family emergency. Other than that, it's zero contact.

You might expect me to be bitter. I've lost everyone I love.

But bitterness isn't what drives me. Something else does.

My favorite chapter in the Bible is Romans 8. It's full of hope and assurance — nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

But it's followed by Romans 9, and that chapter wrecks me every time I read it.

Paul writes:

"I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh... For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge."

That's exactly how I feel about my family. About every Jehovah's Witness I've ever known.

They have zeal for God. They are sincere. They are trying so hard to earn His favor, to do everything right, to please Him.

But they're missing the one thing He actually requires: knowing Jesus — the real Jesus, not a created being, but God in the flesh who died for their sins and rose again.

I didn't build this website because I'm angry. I didn't build it because I want to be reconciled to my family — though I would give anything for that.

I built it because I want them to be reconciled to God.

I built it because somewhere out there, a Witness is lying awake at 2am with doubts they're afraid to voice. Maybe it's my daughter. Maybe it's my son. Maybe it's my mother or father.

And when they finally get brave enough to search for answers, I want this website to be here.

Not to attack them. Not to mock what they believe. But to show them — from Scripture, from the Watchtower's own publications, from the evidence — what I wish someone had shown me decades earlier.

Jesus is God. And He's been waiting for them to call on His name.

Years after that first prayer, I found myself praying another desperate one.

For years, I had struggled with alcohol. I drank to cope with the guilt of how I left, the shame of my failures, and the constant anguish over my family's fate. The nightmares about what would happen to them if they never learned the truth.

I had asked God for help before, but always on my terms. "Help me moderate." "Help me get this under control."

On that day, I finally surrendered completely. I asked Him to remove alcohol from my life entirely.

And He did. Instantly. Completely.

I haven't had a craving since. I don't attend meetings. I don't white-knuckle through each day. It's as if a switch was flipped inside me.

The same God who answered my prayer about Jesus answered my prayer about alcohol the exact same way — the moment I stopped negotiating and truly surrendered.

I share this because it's part of who I am. And because it's one more piece of evidence that the Jesus I prayed to that day at my desk is real, is God, and answers prayer.