Parallels...

The similarities are striking at times.  The paths that follow such a familiar course.  The echoes of my own life... but not my life.

I am who I am today because of the many paths that I've taken.  The direction hasn't always been clear, but as I look back, I see how it brought me to the place I sit at right now.

There is joy in knowing all that I've done to climb the mountain.

There is sadness at some of the valleys I've prevailed through.

As I'm looking back for a moment, I see a path just behind me that seems to run along the same lines.  It is an incomplete path, but one that followed mine without me even knowing it was there.

There are people that we resonate with.  Some are family.  My brother and I shared a very similar path growing up, only to go on two very distinct tangents as we left the safe confines of the University and sought out our own lives away from family and the structure of the church.  My best friend followed a path that only mirrored mine in light brush strokes, but now is more like what I was once on - teaching and communicating with students.

I don't know where this alien path originally came from, and there are places where it doesn't even come close to mine.  But we come to these crossroads and if I take a moment now and reflect, I see the traces of someone else who lived through the destruction.  Through the silence that was forced upon him for years.

I wish I could show him the MANY, MANY others who I've met that let me know that I wasn't alone in this journey.  Once I felt like I was the only one who carried this ugly burden.  Then I met others who's parallels were comforting even in their pain.

The lines seem like they've grown.  They are beside me - some ahead in the journey - some mirroring my own closely.  And there are many that just stop.

I'm crying right now for those.  If they only knew that there were others to reach out to.  That this life isn't meant to be lived alone.  That we need others to help us to stand at times.  Not to carry us, but to help us know that there is light ahead.

I'm about to get over to Stone Mountain.  I need to get to the top and unload some of my own struggles.  

It's a place I have found peace at many times over.

And it's where I met a person who had some parallels in her life as well...