Enjoying Holland

A friend and former co-worker sent me the following story. It was just what I needed at just the right time.

"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...you'll see the Colosseum, works by Michelangelo, the gondolas in Venice. You learn some handy phrases in Italian. It is all very exciting.

After months of anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes 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 has been a change in the flight plan. The plane has landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible place...it is just a different place.

You must go out and buy a new guidebook. You must learn a whole new language and you will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met. Holland is slower paced than Italy, less flashy. But after you've been there for a while, been able to catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, and beautiful tulips; Holland even has Rembrandt.

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 go away because the loss of that dream is very significant.

But if you spend your life mourning that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, very lovely things about Holland."

Lord, help me love and enjoy this new place.