WELCOME TO HOLLAND


When you are going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make wonderful plans such as the Coliseum, the Michaelangelo, David, the gondolas in Venice. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrived. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands and 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 has 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 have never met.

It's just a different place. It's slower paced that Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you have been there 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 are 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 might not 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.

Author unknown