Thoughts from a very special guest blogger....

Below are very wise words of life. My thoughts have been with my cousin and his family for the past week. They are in good care at the Vancouver Children's Hospital at which the newest member of our family has undergone heart surgery. Life is precious make sure you make the most of every day!

This was written by a parent and is in the front of a binder of information given to us by the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

‘ 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 you wonderful plans. The Coliseum, Michelangelo’s David, or the gondolas of 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 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 and begin to notice that Holland has windmills. 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 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 get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special and very lovely things about Holland.’


I found this to be exactly the emotions we went/are going through.