Jehovah, Death and Living an Eternal Life in Paradise
My family was broken several times over. I won’t go into all the details, but by age six, I was child number five. My mom had been married twice and divorced twice. We were now living in a new state without my older brothers. My two little sisters would come along soon after.
I don’t want this to sound like I am blaming my mother for anything. She did the best she could with what she had. She made a lot of the brokenness and was incapable of fixing it. Unfortunately, with her personality type, the loss of her mother at a very young age, and all her brokenness, she was ripe for the Jehovah’s Witness cult to infiltrate her mind.
Anyone can join a cult; it’s not hard.
It’s a slow process over time. Incredibly smart, successful people join cults. So do naïve people. All walks of life, all races — can be persuaded.
I was six when my mom converted from being faithless to joining a cult that promised her eternal life on Paradise Earth. They told her she’d see her mother again (her mom died when she was four). They told her that all of her past mistakes would be forgotten. They love-bombed her with babysitting, dropping off meals, and inviting her out. When she went to a meeting (that’s what JW’s call church service), she was swarmed with new friends who filled the void in her life.
This new found faith came at a cost. Jehovah requires your full attention. And again, this process is slow. Family is cut off. Unbelieving friends are removed. A lot of time is spent on meetings, going door to door, studying for meetings, etc. Holidays, birthdays, and celebrations are taken away. There’s no “God bless you” when someone sneezes, no saying the Pledge of Allegiance, no blood transfusions, and no saying cheers when clinking wine glasses.
LIFE is one big NO.
But for me, at age six — it was the no HEAVEN deal that got me.
Mom told me when people died they went into the ground and rotted. Dead is dead. She explained to me that heaven was a made-up place. It’s not in the bible. Jehovah, she said, will resurrect all the people who died and let them live in Paradise on Earth forever. The trick is they must have believed in Jehovah; otherwise, they stay dead. They had to do all the things he said. They had to work for him.
Now, I wasn’t a biblical scholar. I was six. But it didn’t feel right to me at all. I had the faith of a child, the belief in God. I didn’t have a name for Him, I just knew Him. He’d left his fingerprints all around. In Lake Michigan where we’d play in the cold water in the hot summer. In the puffy clouds that looked like rabbits or puppies. In the flowers that grew in the cracks of the cement. In the tiny ants that worked hard to make their underground tunnels.
I knew there was nothing wrong with a birthday. And Christmas? What was wrong with being happy, looking at the twinkly lights, having hot cocoa with marshmallows, and opening brightly wrapped presents on Christmas morning?
I was six. I had no choice. I had no voice.
Six year old me — happy as a clam.
Something happened one day when I was seven. It was a cloudy day in the fall in Chicago, but still warm because I was in shorts. Probably one of those freakishly warm days, and it would snow the next. It was a Sunday evening before dark. Football must have been on because the normally crowded park behind our apartment was empty, except for me.
I’d gone to play, to escape my baby sister’s constant crying and my mom and step-father’s fighting. My older sister couldn’t be bothered with me. To the park, I went.
I was so happy to find an empty swing, and it was one of the good ones too. The rubber seat was all intact, and the chain had just been changed, so it was shiny.
As a child, my imagination took me to many places. As I swung, I pretended to be a trapeze artist, ready to jump and have my partner catch me and then jump to the next. I was graceful in my mind. I swung high, pumping my legs until I thought if I went any higher, I’d loop around the bar. A few more pumps and I was ready to jump, to have my pretend partner catch me. I counted down, held my breath, and jumped. The ground looked so far away. Maybe it was a bad idea, I thought as I soared through the air. But in my head, my partner was hanging by his knees from his swing, ready to catch me.
From Giphy
Thump.
I landed in the playground dirt (we didn’t have that fancy rubber stuff or bark) on my knees, my hand stretched out in front of me.
That’s when I spotted it.
A blue butterfly.
Its wings crumpled.
It was dead.
I sat back on my heels and thought to myself. Hmmm. Dead. Jehovah says dead, is dead. You go in the ground and rot. I thought it was a lie. But how could I prove it?
I decided to test God right then and there. The best way was to bury the butterfly, then dig it up. I thought that if I unburied it and the butterfly body was still there, then of course, Jehovah was real. If it was gone, it had gone to heaven - which meant God was real and Jehovah a lie.
I dug a shallow grave, pushed the butterfly into it with a stick, then covered it and placed the stick at the center of the grave. A little gravestone.
Then, I looked to the sky and said, “God, I’ll know you’re real if I unbury that butterfly and it’s gone. I’ll know then Jehovah is a lie. If not, I’ll know he’s real.”
I fixed my eyes on the gravestone I’d made, folded my hands, and slowly counted down from 10.
10, 9, 8, 7… about here, I felt a warmth envelop me in a hug. I saw ghostlike transparent wings fluttering up to the sky. I sped up my counting…6, 5, 4,3,2,1.
At one, I moved the dirt away from the marker with one finger, being careful not to miss anything.
From Giphy
The little grave was empty.
I dug around some more, making a bigger hole, just in case I missed it.
Nope. Completely gone. The butterfly had gone to heaven. I’d seen it before my very eyes.
That day, I knew Jehovah was a lie, and God was real.
At age seven, I didn’t have the option to opt out of the cult. It was our family. It was what we did. It affected every part of my life, from what Saturday morning cartoons to sitting in the hallway at school while there was a birthday party happening in the classroom.
It wasn’t until about six years ago that I discovered the warm hug I experienced while watching the butterfly float up to heaven was the Holy Spirit. It was God holding me, letting me know everything was going to be okay. He told me it might take a while, but the grown-up Sally would understand it all one day.
My daily reminder of Heaven — that Jehovah is a lie.