Welcome to Holland

 Happy 5th Birthday to my 5th child! I can't believe how time has flown since we first laid eyes on Mira in August of 2009.

Welcome To Holland
by
Emily Perl Kingsley 
(with a few changes made by me to fit our circumstances)


I am often asked to describe the experience of adopting and 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 adopt a child, 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 might say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that may never go away... because 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.




Thank you God, for taking me to Holland instead of to Italy. Thank you for knowing that Holland would be a far better place for me than Italy would ever be. In your wisdom you knew that I need Holland in order to become a different woman, you knew that Italy would only stunt my growth. There are times that I think about what it must be like for those that get to experience the olive groves and the grape vines of Italy, but I get to experience wooden clogs, and windmills, and tulips in a hundred different colors! Thank you for bringing me to Holland.

Happy birthday to my Mira! You are 5 years old this week! I look forward to your future and seeing the person you will grow up to be.