Holland

One of my absolute favorite bloggers is Kelle.  I was still pregnant with Ella Grace when I stumbled upon her blog and read Nella's Birth Story.  I cried my eyes out.  Like, ugly, sobbing tears and I was so touched by her honesty and her brutal truth.  I felt vindicated in not getting genetic testing done on our baby.  I felt connected to her, but I didn't know why.  That was all before Ella Grace.  Now, I am just jealous of Kelle and her beautiful Nella!  In several of her posts she talked about "Holland" and I never really found the connection...until yesterday.  A friend from high school had posted on my wall and asked about my blog.  I moseyed on over to her blog and found this on her most recent post:

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 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 guidebooks. 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.

Wow!  My "Holland" doesn't have anything to do with a disability, but I can relate to this!  My "Italy" was being a Mommy.  I was all "packed" for parenting.  For gathering the supplies...diapers, clothes, nursery furniture, under eye cream for those sleepless nights, and little tiny shoes...for a trip to my "Italy."  That was the trip I have ALWAYS wanted to go on, since I was a little girl.  Instead, my plane was detoured to "Holland."  My "Holland" is full of decisions about memorial head stones, guilt about the amount of time spent at a grave (or not spent), pain at seeing friends belly pics, and working extra hard at a marriage because it's all you have left.  It's no ITALY!  But you know what else it has?  It has given me a new appreciation for the gift of life, a renewed urgency for Heaven, new friends that are amazing and the ability to have compassion for other women who are hurting and broken.  I would have never chosen "Holland," but now that I am here I am determined to make the best of it and maybe someday God will see fit to take us to "Italy."  And I can guarantee that if He does, we will have a better appreciation of all that it holds than someone who has never been detoured through "Holland."
 
Sorry if all of the metaphors don't make sense!  It makes sense in my head and I just felt like I had to get it out.  I hope that if you are in "Holland" that you are able to find some redeeming qualites and that you know that God has not left you there, He has placed you there.  I am praying for you today!!