On Holland

A good friend of mine, Melissa, is heading to Michigan tomorrow for her daughter's 3rd and hopefully final open heart surgery. Melissa emailed me shortly after I found out about Parker's diagnosis. We are members of an online support group for mothers with heart babies. Anyway, Melissa told me a lot about what to expect and she even sent pictures of her daughter after surgery so I wouldn't be so upset when I saw Parker. Today as she gets ready for this next surgery she posted this article, Welcome to Holland, and said that she felt that it really expressed what life is like having a child with a disability.
While I do not consider Parker to have a disability, because he was fixed, we are less than a week away from our next cardiologist appointment. All of those familiar fears come back again and I have to come face to face one more time the knowledge that our lives could change next week and if it doesn't then I can rejoice again because God heals and Dr. Mavroudis is a genius. Anyway, I wanted to share this article because I do understand what it is like to land in Holland:

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by
Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

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.

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.