WELCOME TO HOLLAND!

Our last long stay in the hospital was a rough one.  It was hard to be there.  The hospital was depressing, Evalette was sick, and I was missing home and our life as it once was.  Many of you reached out to us.  Thank you.  I remember praying for deeper understanding, for strength, and for a renewed brightness of hope.  The next day, I met a woman.  She had noticed James and I with our four children and one on the way in the Kids Zone.  She introduced herself and explained that we reminded her of her and her family 2 years ago when their journey started.  We talked and learned that she was from the area as I had grown up at.  Her kindness and friendship filled my heart with peace and she left me this poem.  She just seemed to know without me saying much what I was going through.  Thank you dear friend from the bottom of my heart.  I am happy to be in Holland, even if Italy never comes!  I am learning to enjoy the tulips, windmills, and other wonderful things along the way.  Happy Holidays Everyone.  

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by
Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.