Escaping the Smoke and Rain: Moving Through and Beyond the Jehovah's Witness Community  

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

many have offered countless support throughout this journey and deserve tremendous thanks. Faith-Writers awarded the initial version of this book, The Price of Freedom, with a first prize finish in their 2010 Non-Fiction category, an acknowledgment that acted as a catalyst for me to pursue publishing, and I am thus extremely grateful to them. Thereafter, the Women’s Journey of Faith magazine was the first to publish my story in shortened format—not once, but twice over—and I am abundantly thankful for that! Likewise, I owe special thanks to the entire team at Word Alive Press for their work in producing this final edition, for Alyssa van Houeve for offering to design the cover, for Sonja Werner for posing for the cover, and to Saul with Indie Book Launcher for challenging the title and sparking new ideas.

Along the way, several organizations have asked me to share my story in regards to spiritual awakening through self-awareness. Though I am frequently told that I tell the story better than I write it, the encouragement I’ve received to craft the spoken word into the written is appreciated more than I can adequately express. In specific, Risk-Talkers: thank you for awarding my speaking ability and infusing trust in my written abilities. Beloved family and friends, I would like to thank you for your patience and loving support, but moreover for granting the time and means for me to write unhindered. To my teachers and mentors: thank you for leading me to the threshold of my own mind, and while there permitting me to wrestle, grapple, and struggle with the attainment of new truths. Faith community: your devotion amazes me. May your attempts to bridge the way grow with understanding.

Lastly, to the One who rests His hand on mine, thank you. Without You, I could not fly.

I have often thought that the best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensively active and alive. At such moments, there is a voice inside which speaks and says, This is the real me.1

—William James, Letters of William James

PROLOGUE

December 2009

FEeared that breaking free from the Jehovah’s Witness community would be the test that would become my testimony. There I was, climbing the ice-clad rungs of a rickety old ladder, anchored in a bed of snow, hanging Christmas lights for the very first time. I was convinced no other symbol would illumine the path I was on as brightly, or expediently. It felt at once exhilarating yet terrifying—like standing on the edge of a precipice knowing if I stepped off I’d either plunge to my death or, somehow, someway, learn to fly.

My oldest son Liam supported the ladder as I weaved a cord of lights through the gnarled, bent-willow limbs of the archway leading to our home. Frost-bitten twigs yielded beautifully to this touch of light as though they had, from the beginning of time, been destined for luminescence. Lighting the way was thrilling, for the most part, until the familiar sound of a couple’s laughter rang forth, disrupting the silence of the night and shattering my nerve in one swift blow. I had not prepared myself for the many what-ifs that would arise if caught in this act. My pulse quickened, racing in tune to the sound of their hurried footsteps. Clinging to an eaves trough with all my might, I leaned tightly in to see if I recognized the voices approaching.

Mom, relax. These people are no one we know. You look completely ridiculous, by the way. Can’t you string those lights a bit quicker? It’s at least minus-thirty out!

I shushed him, and whispered nervously under my breath, You’re certain? It’s not a Witness couple, is it?

Oh for goodness sakes, no—I’m certain. Your secret is safe—at least, ‘til you turn on these lights.

Relieved, I worked magically to finish weaving and copper-wiring green and red lights to the limbs of the willow arbor, then stepped off the perched ladder to witness the effect. Liam had just plugged them in. I was beyond astounded. The porch radiated, suffusing the tapestry of a snowy landscape with a soft, warm, mellow glow. There was a barely perceptible wind stirring: enough to rustle the vines and test the nature of the archway; it swayed gently, but my work had not come undone. This glowing venture, though risk-imposed with rattled nerves, was worth every chance taken.

Well, I see you are clearly pleased with the results, said Liam, interrupting my frozen gaze. Droplets of his breath seemed to have crystallized in the thin night’s air.

Indeed. And you—what do you think?

Oh, it’s great, but you’re the one who’ll have to deal with community reaction. You sure you’re ready for it? he asked with furrowed eyebrows and narrowing eyes of concern. One week, and you’ll have an entire committee of local elders on your case for this, you know.

Perhaps. Or, no one will shake a finger, at all, I suggested. And in a purposeful attempt to thaw his fears, laughingly added, Can’t you see them saying, ‘Oh, that Shauna! What is she up to now? There must be a story behind this!’

Somehow, he looked more alarmed than amused.

Liam, I said. I am not the first person to have ever left their faith of origin—or to face impending ostracism. In fact, we have a family history of doing such things. You know your grandmother fled the convent to escape becoming a nun and ended up waging a lifelong war upon Christendom, don’t you? And, don’t forget it was your grandpa who, at nine years of age, stood up to the Russian, Doukhobor commune and renounced all faith in God. People do this sort of thing all the time, and live to tell about it.

Oh, great, here comes the Russian revolutionary tales. Yes, that makes this all so much more excusable!

Boy, you ain’t heard the half! Just wait till I tell you the rest…

And as we raced each other up the front steps, I couldn’t help smile at the adventures that led to this precarious moment. Some are utterly fantastical, preposterous even—family stories written by the lives of roguish characters, plots entailing extreme reversals of fortune. But, with each telling, I grow more aware that as mad and as outlandish as it sounds, this is ultimately, and preciously, a story of hope. Indeed, if the twinkling of lights associated with the Christmas story, as well as mine, reveal nothing else it is this: in the coldest and seemingly darkest of places there shines an augury of hope for brighter and more flamboyant living ahead—if we, as fragile creatures, have the will to believe it.

PART ONE

EMERGENGE

Who knows who you are… A person is a novel: you don’t know how it will end until the very last page. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth reading to the very end.2

—Yevgeny Azmyatin, We

CHAPTER ONE

It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards.3

—Soren Kierkegaard, Journals

BOrn under the wide canvas of Saskatchewan skies, my mother Toria paved the way before me. Measureless prairies supported her love for vast, open spaces. She was, unfortunately, a severe claustrophobic. She was also an intuitively spiritual being—had an insatiable thirst for God, and an even greater hunger to inflict spirituality on others. I, especially, soaked it up like a sponge…and then some.

She was sent to the convent at fifteen years of age, when the family homestead burned to a cinder. She was the eldest of eleven children; father, an alcoholic; mother, frail and sickly. During her final pregnancy, her mother was stricken with cancer and due to some experimental treatments the baby was born handicapped—diagnosed with Down syndrome. Mom, hence, became a caregiver—in every respect.

One would think, then, that convent life would have come as an unexpected relief—a favor, even. It had a spiritual flavor, yes, but the peculiar nature of the person called my mother posed unique challenges, in and of themselves, to convent living. You see, while she was blessed with a loquacious and enchantingly vivacious nature—earning her nickname, Sparky—she was also blessed with a well-endowed figure, the combination of which highly complicated matters for the nuns. To answer the ever-startling question, What do we do with a problem called … Toria? they began with the physical.

She was instructed to pin down, sew down, nip-down her brassieres. Singing lessons would—possibly, hopefully—lessen the smoky, throaty, sexy tone of her voice. A bun would smooth out her wild and wispy crown of ash-brown hair, it was thought, and increased attention to study might dull the sparkle of her wide, emerald eyes—it was thought. Of course, thoughts don’t always manifest themselves in reality, regardless of New Age talk to the contrary. Therefore, when all else failed, she was encouraged to become a nun—wed her merry, little self to the Lord. The habit, or nun’s attire, was ordered at once; one bust-size smaller, of course.

Needless to say, my writing this today indicates the swift and fleeting notion to become a nun was, well … swift and fleeting. As luck, or the hands of fate would have it, she grew terribly ill the night before she was to be ordained. She was hospitalized, and an emergency tonsillectomy performed—under ether, as the anaesthetic choice of the day. Fading off to sleep, she heard the incessant drubbing of a voice say,

There is no God. There is no God. There is no God. There is no God.

The nuns were stupefied speechless by this experience, for a minute or two. When they rebounded from shock, they promptly announced that God had another plan for the young flibbertigibbet known as my mother. My mother, parched and dry post-surgery, felt highly distraught. It would be fair to say she even felt angry. She questioned everything, a lot. Mainly, she questioned God. It goes without saying that she did not return to the convent. And, truth be told, quite a collective sigh of relief ensued. In fact, it is said that if one is unusually quiet, and unusually still, he or she may yet hear in the whispering winds blowing and scattering canola fields from horizon to horizon, the enduring words: Thank you, Lord.

Never idle or out of sorts for long, my mother enrolled herself in nursing school. She fit right in, and looked very fetching in her freshly starched nurse’s uniform and hat. The skirt was short enough to reveal her most becoming physical feature, now that her nipples were inverted for life: her legs. She put them to immediate use, covering all four wings of the hospital, per shift. Her tendency towards sleeplessness was again, another remarkable asset; she willingly accepted shift work. Indeed, the kindly nuns spoke most fortuitously when they declared God having another purpose for my mother’s life—one not exempt from a little fun now and then.

In celebration, she and her roommates set out to paint the small town, feisty red. My mother threw on a black and white, polka-dot dress, fuchsia shoes and lipstick to match; fixed her hair in a high pony-tail, and left for the local dance hall in retro style.

The hall was thick with dark greyish-blue smoke. A dozen young lasses twisted and jived on the dance-floor—to Elvis, no less. Young farmhands reeked of beer; old men, of whisky. My mother had to do something to garnish some attention, and thus, used that mighty-fine, throaty voice of hers. Cutting the air like a knife, her bellowing cry rang forth:

Boys, hey? I need you to sit up, stand up, and lift your heads up! The first fella to put a drink in this here hand of mine gets the first dance…and I won’t disappoint!

In less than a second flat, she was sipping a scotch and water. The winner was no local—that much, she knew. Point in fact, the giver of drinks was an austere gentleman with a stooped back; eyes, behind black and gold rimmed frames, were a kyanized blue; coal-black hair blended into the fibres of his suit jacket; rail-thin tie guarded a stiff neck; face, chiselled, and sharp as flint. His demeanor was too introverted to belong to a salesman, too dressy for a med-student, too absorbed in Zarathustra to be Catholic.

Who, on God’s green earth, was this elusive enigma? Her curiosity almost killed her.

CHAPTER TWO

He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.4

—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

MY father, the captain of his own ship, was most proudly a self-made man. More specifically, Vasily Zhakarova hailed from poor Russian immigrants of the unique Doukhobor sect—the sect he waged war on at age nine. While precious little is known about the Doukhobor community now, I can assure you, it was infamous in its day.

The Doukhobors were to Canada what the Amish are to the United States of America in today’s world, without the radical element. Doukhobors trace their humble roots back to southern Russia when a small fraction of believers split away from the Russian Orthodox Church—on moral and liturgical grounds. A nonnegotiable stance on pacifism led to conflict with Czars, and prolonged their repression. In 1895, thousands of Doukhobors burned firearms and loudly rejected all forms of military service. The Quakers, along with famed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, came to their aid. As a consequence, almost eight thousand members fled to the neutral zone of Canada.

Canada welcomed the Doukhbors, initially. In time, mind you,