At The End Of Your Rope? Find A Road!
I know its sounds a bit alarming, dramatic and perhaps a bit Hollywoodish, but some people with mental illness do reach a place, where they are no longer at the end of their rope, or at their wit’s end. In fact they end up and the end, with no rope. At the end of that rope and wit’s end, they often find two roads. One continues on to hopelessness and despair, and paved with no good intentions or happy ending. The other leads to help. Two very different paths.
But I have this visual. It is the visual of someone in deep agonizing pain with just barely the strength to feebly reach up with weak hand to grasp a strong steady hand reaching down. The one reaching down is the hand of God. We know who the other one is. This connection, two hands as one, signals new hope and help. It leads back to a path rarely taken. The importance of deep spirituality in discovering help for mental illness must not ever be underestimated.
For the one searching for, or already who believes in God, who is creator, sustainer and lover of our souls, there is always hope. His path for mental health, beginning with prayer, and under the guidance of a professional is the route leading away from the wits end.
Robert Frost in his poem “The Road Not Taken “ gives us a good illustration of the best path.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.