Now that I have your attention, let’s talk a little bit about children that are born with a disability. “According to the March of Dimes, about 150,000 babies are born with birth defects each year in the United States.” Unless you happen to be lucky enough to live in a perfect world, which I do not, you more than likely know at least one family that has a child with a physical or intellectual disability. Often the child will have both.
There is a group of mothers at my church, with disabled children, that formed a ministry in order to support, help and encourage each other. The name of the group is “Moms In Holland.” The name was thought up from an amazing description of how a mom feels when she has a child born with a disability. Rather than me attempting to explain it and mess it up badly, read the brief and beautiful analogy by Emily Perl Kingsley.
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 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 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.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved
After reading what Ms. Kingsley wrote, there really is not much more for me to say. A disabled child in the home will bring new challenges, extra work, heartache at times but so much beauty and love also. Do not miss out on the incredible love that a disabled child can bring into your life, because your focus is on what you don’t have, rather than on what you do have – a child who loves you unconditionally and only craves that same love in return.