Welcome To Holland
by Emily Perl Kingsley
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.
I remember the first time I read this poem. As I read, I related to it. I did feel like I had planned another trip only to end up in a different place. My life had definitely taken a turn that I had not expected. But once I came to the end, something did not sit well with my soul. "And the pain of that will never, ever, ever go away......."
Even though I was in pain at the time, I knew that pain would not last forever, because I know what kind of God I have. I have a God who heals. I have a God who makes all things new. I have a God of love and compassion, peace and comfort.
And I can say, almost 14 months later that I am not in pain now. The hurt I felt in those early days was because this was not how I had planned it, but it is how God planned it. And I can assure you that God's plan is better. My life has become exactly what it is "supposed" to be, the way God planned it, and I love it just the way it is.
To me, Holland is a place that I travel back and forth from. In the early days, I had switched my residency to Holland, and it was a place of loss and pain. As time went on, it wasn't a place of pain, but it became more of a place of feeling different and sometimes alone, but I was visiting less and less. My feelings and view of Holland changed just as everything in my life evolves as I grow. Now, Holland is a part of my life that I expect will always be there, but it's just a place on my passport, not my permanent residence. I suppose I will visit there whenever Kamdyn gets some extra stares, whispered comments between curious onlookers, or comments from other children, but I won't stay long.
If I spent my days thinking about how Kamdyn will never____________ fill in the blank, than I am in Holland, but Holland is not my home. I can live wherever I want. Italy, Rome, Paris, or wherever my heart desires. Life is what I make of it. I decide how I will view my life and where God has led me.
So instead I will choose to see the things that Kamdyn can.
*She can light up the world with her smile
*She can steal your heart with one look
*She can fill our hearts with the love that all of our children have brought to our lives, but steal a little extra while she's at it.
*She can surprise us and show us that disABILITY does not define her.
*She can be a ray of sunshine who lights up our lives
*And she can make the best faces
Happy Monday.
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