The following story was written by Emily Perl Kingsley describing the perspective of having a child with Autism... HOWEVER- I feel like it could be likened to ANYONE, since we all have struggles, disappointments, and hardships of all kinds in our life--- things that don't go the way we planned.
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 Sistine Chapel, Gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After several 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 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. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And 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 experience will never, ever, ever, go away. 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.
It's funny; isn't it? Life. Experiences. Trials. Joy. Struggles. Happiness. Life. I don't think that trials are on a scale. If it is hard for you, then IT.IS.HARD. No need for comparatives or clarifiers. You don't need anyone "one upping" their trials to yours. You don't need anyone telling you "So-and-So had all your struggles and __________ and they got through it". We can't compare our struggles to others... or worse: our struggles to others blessings. That's a lose-lose situation. You will never win in that scenario. I think that this story can relate to any of us. Our plans don't always go the way we want... or if they do, sometimes it's not in the timing we want.
Even with these disruptions to our "plan", we need to keep going forward. Like the author said, we need to enjoy where we are at. We need to enjoy the lessons and sights we see on our new adventure. We need to look for the good, wherever that may be. We all will find ourself somewhere where we hadn't "planned". It will happen; or, the trial' hardship will pass. But why miss the blessings and lessons that we could have learned because we were so upset that we "weren't where we were suppose to be"......
Love you always,
Mom
