you may want to tissue handy (just in case)
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.
This Essay was written by Emily Perl Kingsley c1987 by . All rights reserved
2 comments:
The first time I heard this it was told by the mother of a son with Downs Syndrome from the Pulpit, she had told it to someone at Walgreens who was pregnant with a child known to have birth defects who saw someone with similar challenges and sought counsel. I do not know the answers to this trial, but have all of the love, admiration, and reverence for the moms who find themselves arriving in HOlland.
I happened upon this, another mother's personal experience with arriving in "Holland." and I wanted to share it.
It was 6 years ago today that we found out our son had Down syndrome. When he was born we had no idea, it even surprised the doctors who in the first day didn’t notice any signs. I remember one of our nurses handed me a pamphlet with a short story about a trip to Holland. Every year we remember this special day when we really discovered how special our son is to Heavenly Father. Not that all children aren't special, but some have more challenges than others in this life and I believe it's because they were exceptional spirits in the premortal life. This story gives me strength during those hard times but also gives me hope to know that we have one of Heavenly Father's choice spirits.
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