Blessings in disguise

I love watching my daughter. I especially love watching my daughter use her left hand. It makes me all warm inside and I can always feel that smile leak out and spread across my face. I have friends who will never understand the issues that we face with our daughter. When we first brought her home, it used to bother me to see pictures of babies, etc. with both hands. I know that sounds horrible, but I am being honest. It isn't like I wished any ill will on those babies, I just wished that Gracyn had that normalcy.

Now, I just try to look at it differently. I try and cling to what one of my students said:
Brandon, a 17 year old says, "Mrs. C...you should really look at Gracie's hand as a blessing."
"Okay...what do you mean Brandon?" I respond
"It is a blessing because she'll never have to guess if people really like her for her. If they are with her you know that they do. You'll know that they REALLY love her. A lot of girls will never have that security", he said dead serious.

He is right. She is blessed. And we are blessed to have her.

A Nestie friend of mine, and fellow Canalian, Erin, posted the following on her blog (see the link in my blogs on the left side here). It was sent to her by a friend of hers and another fellow Nestie. I liked it...no, I loved it. It really put things into perspective.

Welcome To 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 guide books 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 guide books. 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.... 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'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, 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.

©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley.