Holland

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 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.

by Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 All rights reserved

This was given to me by TWO dear friends as a great metaphor to the lives of women who have challenging children.

As I began this journey I felt a little bitter that I wasn't in "Italy."  I almost got mad at seeing other people and their kids who were normal and not RAD.  I was told in a priesthood blessing that God knew that this life wasn't what I had anticipated when I was young.  I have come to realize that I can't magically change this life, that God has entrusted this special boy with me and we have a lot to learn from it all.  As long as I am looking for the lessons among the chaos, then I am the person I want to be, "submissive, meek, humble, full of love and willing to submit to all that the Lord would inflict" (Mosiah 3:19 Book of Mormon).  I have to live in this state of mind to not just survive this struggle but to thrive within it!  I can see the tulips and the Rembrandts! I can see that Holland is where the Lord needs me now!