Being a Mom in Holland

I really need to share this beautiful poem and a link to a website with an awesome audio download by Steve Demme. ( author of Math-U-See)

I listened to his topic called " Finding Hope and Redemption in the Valleys of Life" today. It was truly an encouragement to listen to him share about life with their son, Johnny, who was born with Downs Syndrome. He read a poem I had been given by a friend called "Welcome to Holland". You can read it below:

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
byEmily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

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.

Though we don't have a child with Downs Syndrome, we have been down quite a long and often bumpy road. We have learned so much about ourselves, our child and our awesome God. In parts of this discussion he encourages us to grieve and to know that it is ok. Sometimes, especially in the Christian community, it is hard to feel like you can grieve...as if we are not walking in faith or as if we are down or discouraged. On the contrary, I want to say that we are real and we need to be real so that we can represent a very REAL Savior to a world who needs to know His love.

It has been through the struggles and the trials of having a child who has had special needs that we have seen the awesome hand of the Creator most significantly. And in those times, while they involved fear there was awe at the beauty of His precious love. We have not be promised an easy road, infact the Word of God tells us to expect trials and to even rejoice in them. James 1:3 tells us that the trying of our faith produces perseverance.


I want to encourage you to listen to this audio if you have a child with special needs or know a family with a special needs child. I was blessed by the straight forward honesty that he shared and the wisdom I could glean from their experiences. Scroll down till you get to the topic mentioned above.( Finding Hope and Redemption in the Valleys of Life.) http://thefamilythatstaystogether.org/speaking-topics/ Even if you don't have a child with special needs I bellieve you will be blessed.