Most people could agree, even the Jehovah's Witnesses, that clinical depression places people in one of their most vulnerable and weakened states.
These states are when God is most needed to help keep hope in times of darkness. Bipolar II Disorder sometimes needs a traumatic event in the person's life to onset the symptoms. This is how it occured for me. After a cascade of events involing the divorce of my parents and the DF'ing of my father I started to show signs of very extreme depression.
I had a business that was supporting my wife and I that I started from selling website's to used car lot owners. I had over 20 dealers that trusted me with their online inventory monthly. When the depression came in it came in like a tsunami for me. I suddenly had no desire to show up to my weekly meetings with my clients to take pictures, upload inventory and write up strategy for their web presences. So I just didn't show up... for months. I laid on my bed for a long time and sometimes went out and tried to have fun, but the business remained just a hazy dream that might as well have never happened.
My wife knew something was wrong. I was not the man she married, I was only a shell of him.
Of course as a loyal Witness I sought help from my local elders. The congregation community can be quite nice and it helps a great deal, but it cannot fill the void ultimately. That's why the Witness Framework kind of works with depression for a time. They are a tight knit group and can be a very strong force at times. Yet, it's the heavy regimen that will take a depressed witness down and everybody knows it.
I remember having conversations with my elders about the "go go go" "more more more" language in the Watchtowers. I told them it made me feel inadequate. I could tell they really did sympathize with me because I truly was between a rock and a hard place. They had to keep telling me to make my meetings regularly (standard WT advice) even though they knew the content was often directed at slackers and I was trying my best. My best didn't look good on paper and that counts for something in the Watchtower world no matter how many Witnesses vehemently deny it.
It was odd to speak to God in prayer and ask him to help give me strength to "look past" the Watchtower's language directed at a demographic of "people who could do more." I couldn't do more and I actually needed to do less, since I was still spiralling, and it strained my mind even further.
My relationship with God, today, wholly consists of my awareness and watchfulness of his Plan. I watch the energy people put out and wonder where it fits in the Scheme. Most importantly I often think about where I fit in that scheme. I feel snug and secure within the plan, after I accepted my place in it, as I watch my life pass by. I get to choose at each crossroad and watch what happens next.
It's the watching that makes me think of God. Everytime I think of God I consider that a "prayer." If God is with us then he watches us and what fun is must be at times and what a tragedy it is other times. What does the Human Resume look like from a objective perspective? What do we look like to God? I don't think we're supposed to know that, but it must be something similar to the fascination, appreciation and shame I have for my own kind.
The reason why I am saying all this is to paint two distinct pictures. You see, I am still extremely depressed. That's the bad part about Bi Polar Depression: it doesn't go away it only goes in cycles. It is for life unless a cure is found.
In the Watchtower Framework my relationship with God was nothing more than trying to live up to a human standard. I have found out that human standards are actually harder than God's standards; much harder and needless at times. God just wants us to grow using the tools he provided us so that we can continue the Plan.
-Sab