The Healing Road

 
What is it that this road to healing is going to look like?  I am so curious to know.  Will the path be rocky, or will I find it paved and solid?  Okay, so I doubt a healing path is paved.  That is just wishful thinking on my part hoping that it might be somewhat straight forward and easy.  I know that won't be the case.  A paved road indicates a road that has been traveled, time spent on it it, leveling it, clearing away the debris, and then the paving comes.  No one has been on my road of healing, so I am the one who is going to have to do the work. Getting a paved road is a process just as healing is going to be a process, and neither of them are going to happen overnight. 

I wonder how the road will end up looking when I am done.  There are lots of roads out there that never get paved for whatever reason.  They stay rocky, filled with potholes, possibly being over grown by shrubs and brambles.  Will my road to healing lead me to "home" or will it end up just being a road to nowhere?  There are those roads out there too...the ones that just end, with no connections to anywhere.

If I were an artist I would paint the picture of how my road might look:  Woman standing at the edge of a path, a path that twists and turns through a thick forest.  Someone waits at the edge of the forest to greet her and lead her to the one who can show her the way through the forest, The Path-finder.  The Path-finder leads her to the other side.  Here the road in front of her is a little more clear, but this is where the Path-finder stops.  She urges the woman on.  There is a steep hill in front of her, she can't see over the edge of that hill, but at the top of it stands yet another guide to help her face the unknown. 

This is where my painting would have to stop, because this is as much of the road as I know.  My Doctor led me to the Path-finder, my counselor, she took me through the forest of depression and silence.  She helped the words to come and now we stand together at the edge of the forest with the hill in front of me and my new psychiatrist standing at the top of that hill waiting to help me traverse the other side of it, the side I can't see.  The side that will determine if the road will lead to home or just end up going nowhere. 

The thought of a road going to nowhere is almost enough to make me want to run back to the forest, cut down some trees and build a house there on the edge of the forest.  Who wants to travel a road to nowhere?  Who wants to go through all that work just to find that all that effort has been fruitless? 

Don't worry, I don't plan on homesteading here, because what if I did and never braved the hill only to find out later that the road does lead to "home" and I find that all my efforts would have been worth the journey, but I gave up too soon.  That thought is more frightening than the first.  To be able to find wholeness and healing is worth the risk of possibly ending up on a road to nowhere.