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.
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©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Day1: A picture of yourself with 10 facts.Proverbs 6: 16 There are six things the Lord hates—
no, seven things he detests:
17 haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that kill the innocent,
18 a heart that plots evil,
feet that race to do wrong,
19 a false witness who pours out lies,
a person who sows discord in a family.
What can you say or about this?
Since returning to Texas from and awesome life in the USN, I have really studied several books of the bible. When I first returned it was the book of James. WOW! Everywhere I went, everywhere I turned James was in my face. James taught me so much. I still need to work on some of the things he taught me. Unfortunately I am human and I am always working on myself to be more like Jesus and do as he teaches. I have read the book of Acts and studied it. Now I am reading the book of Proverbs and studying it. My goal is to more like Jesus and be obedient to what the bible teaches. I pray that when people see me or talk to me they know without a doubt who my master is.
Sometimes I fall down but I get up, dust off my pants and pull up my boots. That is all I can do, otherwise I don’t move forward.
Over the last 6 months I have read a book called “Deadly Emotions” by Con Colbert. It has helped me get in touch with many things in my body and mind. It has been an awesome journey and I hope and pray it will continue. It has also helped me work on balance in my life. Which is not doing well with but I am working on it and that is all I can ask of myself.
Please keep me in your prayers.
Thank you, Lori
