Saturday, March 30, 2013

Because I needed this today...

 Repost from times past...

When we lived in the Houston area, one of Gregory's therapists gave us this story (for lack of a better word). It was soon after Gregory's formal diagnosis of autism, and she knew we could use some inspiration.

source

"The Beauty of 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 guidebooks 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 guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you never would 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. Holland has tulips. Holland 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 go away, because the loss of that dream is a 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."

We keep a copy of this on the refrigerator. It's our inspiration on bad days. A reminder that Gregory is, indeed, a very special child.

It is time...

to make my blog what it was meant to be when I started as Crazy for the Country way back in 2008.

Beginning at this point, my blog is a journal. A journal for family and friends to see photos, hear news and see what we are up to in our lives.

We live hundreds of miles away from family, so this is a way for them to keep up to date on what is happening with us.

David and I married in August and I STILL have not updated my "About Me" page. What an awful wife I am. David is a wonderful husband and such a God-send for me.

I, like so many others, have gotten way off track with my blog. Adding affiliate links and the like, trying to make a little extra cash for our family in doing so. They will be removed very soon and not added again without making a notation in the post where one might appear.

However, I am a Pampered Chef consultant, a Scentsy consultant and a consultant for Lilla Rose (Flexi-clips and beautiful hair accessories) and I will have buttons for those businesses in my sidebars.  If anyone would like to do a show for any of them, please let me know! All of them can be done exclusively online....right from the comfort of your home and through websites.

So, with that, I leave you on this beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Have a glorious Easter.