Hope For Those Struggling With Mental HealthExemplo

When You Come to the End of Your Rope

I rested my head on the steering wheel of our used SUV, overwhelmed, exhausted, and confused. Moments earlier, at what had seemed like the last minute, I had taken my wife, Stacee, by the hand and walked, possibly ran, from the admissions process of a mental hospital across the street from the fast-food restaurant where we now parked.

The last two days had seemed like two weeks. What had been a gradual decline in Stacee’s mental health over several years had quickly become a steep descent into the quicksand of depression, suicidal ideation, and overwhelming mental pain. With fear and desperation in her eyes, Stacee looked to me for an answer and any lifeline of hope I could throw her. She was drowning in waters of mental illness, waters in which I had no ability to swim.

Stacee needed help, but the place across the street was not the answer, that much I knew. She needed hope, but I saw no hope through the doors of that facility. So, there we sat, crying over each other and crying out to God for any light, any direction, any answer for what to do next.

“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more God and his rule” (Matthew 5:3 The Message).

So what do you do when you come to the end of your rope – when you come to the end of your capacity to deal with or face whatever your circumstances may be? Every person likely reaches this place at some point in their life, but for those who struggle with mental health and for those who love and support them, finding the end of your rope is likely a common reality.

For Stacee, me, and our family, in that moment of desperation and surrender, God met us there. The short version of the rest of the story is that within a day Stacee entered a different mental health facility, a place of dignity and hope. There she received in-patient care which began her and our family’s recovery journey through the challenges of chronic mental illness – a journey of many twists and turns for sure, but one through which God has walked with us each step of the way.

The apostle Paul faced a serious trial, possibly a health struggle, for which he, too, came to the end of his capacity to manage or overcome. 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 tells us that Paul prayed several times for the Lord to take away his pain, this “thorn in his flesh.” God’s response was not to take away Paul’s suffering, but to promise that His grace was sufficient to meet whatever weakness Paul might encounter. In his weakness, God’s power and strength filled Paul’s empty capacity and were more than enough to sustain him and to give him the resources to endure and overcome.

God’s strength, grace and power are more than enough to rescue you when you reach the end of your rope. When you can find no answers, no strength, no capacity to deal with whatever you may be facing, surrender your hopelessness, your weakness, your emptiness to God. It is in this moment God can do His greatest work. “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).