Welcome To Holland

I choose to share a poem given to me by a good friend as my first post. I believe it relates quite well to "The Road Not Often Traveled". At the time Winema gave me this poem the Lord was taking us from the San Luise Valley in South Central Colorado. Although we had only lived there for three years we had grown and changed so much as a family. We made friends for a lifetime and had come to love the area. When Winema first read me the poem it spoke exactly to what I was feeling. How could the Lord take us from this place we loved so much and the plans we were making and at the same time I knew if I didn't choose to move forward I'd never enjoy what was ahead. The really crazy part is Winema had been meaning to share this poem with me since we first meant about a year early. We meant Winema shortly after our daughter Dally was born pretty much without arms and legs. Honestly though I didn't need to hear it then I needed to hear it at the very time Winema shared it. Amazing how our Lord works.

                                                                    Welcome To Holland

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 mush stay.
The important this is that they haven't taken you to a terrible, 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 that 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 Rembrandt's.
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 for that will never, ever, ever, go away.. because the loss of the dream is  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, very lovely things... about Holland.