Welcome to Holland
By Emily Pert Kinsley
"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 for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
...
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."
2 comments:
What a beuatiful analogy. You're little crewton is a figher. He's proven that over and over. For such a tiny wee one, he's incredibly strong. And he gets that from you. And you can only get that kind of strength from our precious Heavenly Father. May He bless you immensely this Christmas and in the New Year. I can't wait to read about the day he gets to go home and your family gets to be together. Photograph that day like crazy!!!
I have two kids who are special, and I refer to that poem many, many times. There are beautiful things in Holland ... along with that lost feeling we have for being somwehere (or someWHEN) we could not possible have planned for. The mixed emotions are part of it all, and part of the beauty.
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