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 your're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. you buy a bunch of guidebooks and make wonderful plans. the coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some 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?!!!" 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.You must learn a whole new language. You will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met. It's just a different place. It's slower pace 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 Holland has windmills, and Holland has tulips. Holland even has remembrants.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they are bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. For the rest of your life, you will say, " yes that's where I was supposed to go, that's what I had planned.
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 you life mourning the fact that you didn't get to go to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things.....about Holland.
I thought this was such an amazing story. I started thinking about how life is just the same as this story. It doesn't matter what you try to plan, it doesn't always work out the way we want it to. I started thinking about what advice I would give to the beautiful mother and father who just received news that they have been detoured to Holland. My advice would be something like this. As you grow older, you will realize that there are so many things out of our control. Life defiantly has detours. Lots of situations take us on a course we didn't plan. We sometimes try to control our children and we try to save them from things that would harm them. We try to help them reach their greatest potential, but sometimes that is not how it goes. You plan, you try to do your best, but sometimes your plan changes. You wake up and find out that you are in Holland..I have made choices and my flight plan was changed numerous times. My kids have been detoured too. The best thing to remember is that we have a Heavenly Father that loves us. He is aware of our needs and sometimes he changes the flight plan. No matter what life has for you, know you are not alone and that you are loved.
