a touching little note

Greg's sweet mom sent this to me in an email earlier this week and I thought it was a lovely outlook to have with so much truth....it was written by a lady with 10 month old twins...one healthy one and one with special needs. Hope it touches your heart too!



A Trip To Holland by Emily Perl Kingley



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 Sistine Chapel, Gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After several 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 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. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And 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 experience will never, ever, ever, go away.

The loss of that dream is a 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.

 The sooner you accept fact that you will no longer be traveling to Italy the sooner your heart and mind will be free to enjoy and appreciate Holland. Saying that is easy. Doing it takes practice and is a process that I believe will get easier over time but something I will have to work at for the rest of my life.


I love every ounce of this little boy more than I ever, ever thought possible. God is good. He trusted Greg and I to care for him and we are forever changed and grateful. :)