Life in Holland: Hallelujah

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Hallelujah

Anna has worn her backpack and gotten her tube feedings during the day at daycare for 2 days now and it has gone perfectly! She has tolerated more tube feeding the past 2 days than she has in quite a while. Yesterday she got an extra 375 calories and today she got 475. That is huge! Her teachers have been so awesome and have said they haven't had any problems at all. Luckily her main teacher used to work in nursing home many years ago and so she is familiar with g tubes. She also has a 6 month old daughter who required heart surgery at just a few days old so she is no stranger to kids with medical problems either. I see once again how God's plan is so amazing and how he puts the right people in the right place at the right time. It is no accident and no coincidence! Her teacher also said Anna is still eating well at lunch and is taking better naps than she ever has before. I pray it continues...

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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.