I stopped waiting for my life to start

I didn’t want to keep waiting for my life to start. I didn’t want to give one more minute to being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. For me, it wasn’t this long season of anger or resentment. It actually felt like freedom almost immediately. Like I could finally breathe.

I didn’t want to stay connected to something that was going to pull me out of my life now. Keeping up with the “new light” and all the changes would just make me angry. That’s not a good vibration. That feels like fear, not love. And I didn’t want to live my life from that place.

What I wanted was to be present.

And for me, being present means not living in my head but in my heart. It means giving my full attention to whoever is in the room with me. It means not constantly thinking about all the time spent in things I wish I wouldn’t have done, or replaying all the things I could have done differently. It’s choosing to look at what’s in front of me now and the opportunities that are open to me and my family.

And honestly, there has been so much freedom in that.

Celebrating holidays for the first time felt freeing. Being able to sleep in on Saturday mornings instead of getting up for service. Just having slow mornings with my family, being present, not rushing, not feeling like I should be somewhere else. Those moments matter to me.

That’s the life I didn’t want to miss.

At some point, I realized I wanted a new beginning. Not just a new chapter, because that still felt tied to everything before, but a completely new book. I wanted to put that one away and start again.

And at the same time, I can see now that not everything about being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses was bad. We had values. I really believed I was doing what was right. I can honor that time in my life and still choose to let go of what I don’t want to carry with me anymore.

Tomorrow isn’t promised. We don’t know when our time is up, and I don’t want to get to the end feeling like I held back. I want to go out spent. I want to know I gave everything to my family. I want to know they got all of me.

Living fully in my life now means something different too. It means helping others who have come out. It means seeing that time not just as something to leave behind, but as a season that shaped me and gave me purpose. A season I can learn from, grow from, and now use to support someone else.

For me, living in love has opened up opportunities I couldn’t see before. Staying in the past would have kept me stuck.

And maybe the question is… what would it look like for you to fully step into your life now?