Life

This story really hit close to home for me. I thought that I would share it.

"I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with special needs to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like . . .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. Michelangelo’s 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 flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”“Holland?” you say. “What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for 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 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 would never have met. It’s just a different place. A slower pace 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 even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going to 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 very significant loss.But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t go to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.–Author Unknown'

We plan our lives and we think that we have control over it. Then when life doesn't happen how we expect it to it turns our world upside down. I am learning that even though it doesn't always turn out how we planned it, amazing things can still happen. I am learning and growing in ways I didn't think that I could. Most days are good, but some days are hard.