Turning the Page to 2024, Part 3: When Life Takes You to a Different Destination than You Planned
By Steve Gahagen
Even if one is not a futuristic dreamer, a new year creates this natural tendency to think about the future. It’s like turning the pages to a new chapter in our lives, though technically January 1st is not really all that different than December 31st.
We have a natural desire to be in charge of our destiny, to feel in control. Setting goals and making changes as we enter a new year can help us see that we are not victims but can be architects of our future. This freedom is important to not feeling trapped or hopeless.
Yet, our desire to be in control can fail us in a couple of ways: 1. It can cause us to forget the gift of life and how dependent we have been on others to get to where we are. No one is a self-made person. 2. It can cause us to forget that no matter how intentional we might be, life can sometimes take us to a destination that we had no choice in and may have been our worst fear.
Below is an inspiring poem, Welcome to Holland, written in 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley, a parent of a disabled child who never planned on the future that was to be theirs.
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.
Our four-year-old grandson was diagnosed with a traumatic spinal cord injury shortly after birth. It took my daughter and her husband to a different destination than they had planned. But in the midst of the difficult days and pain, life and the miraculous emerge. Their faith in God and hope that he will one day walk, empowers their journey.
When life takes us to a different place, we adjust and fully live where we are at. Though we didn’t choose our destination, we can choose how we live. The irony of life is that it is often the painful detours that build character and allow us to see the miracles of life and relationships we would not have otherwise seen.
Questions to Consider:
What people have played a significant role in your story? How could you thank them?
What detours has life taken you on that you did not choose or plan? What adjustments did you have to make? How has your life been different?
How can you leverage your strengths to adjust to unforeseen destinations?