Welcome to Holland

by Sarah

When we learned of Luke's diagnosis, a friend of my mom's named Alison, reached out to me.  She knew exactly what we were feeling and experiencing because just last October she and her husband had lost their sweet son, James.  She had been told that James had a diagnosis that would prevent him from living very long-if at all-after birth but yet, she and her husband chose to love him and carry him with them as long as they could.

Alison is one of the blessings that has come into my life during this season.  She knows exactly what it feels like, how people respond or choose to back away because they don't know what to say or how to act.  She has had the difficult conversations and has experienced the long hours and days mixed with joy and profound sorrow.  She knows and she gets it.  She shared with me the following and I wanted to share it with you all as it speaks to some of the emotion, beauty and grief we feel each day as we make our way toward our own beautiful Holland.

 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 Italilan.  Its 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 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.