Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: holland

  • Holland Window

    She was visiting her daughter and family out of state when they delivered a love-meal to a family welcoming a new baby into their home. “I want you to come in so you can see the Holland window,” her daughter insisted, “because you will love it and the story about it’s significance.” The following “Story Time about the new house” was published on her Facebook page by the grandmother of this new baby. Both the story and the photo are being shared as a Sacred Story with her permission:

    There is a short essay that circulates in the community of families whose children are diagnosed with a special healthcare need or disability called “Welcome to Holland.” I will post it below so you can read it. I was sent this essay when I shared publicly for the first time about our daughter Charlotte’s diagnosis at age 5 months, and I have passed it along to other mothers over the past 16 years. Of course no two people experience life altering news the same, so the essay may not be so healing to everyone, but it has been a tremendous piece of comfort and encouragement to me and to many who read it.

    We had looked at this house online SO many times over the past year, and had dismissed it as out of our price range. It sat on the market and the price kept coming down and on a whim one Sunday we drove by and stopped in at an open house…”just to see it in person.” I was stunned by the beauty of the space and loved hearing the story of the man who had custom built the home. He was an antiques dealer and historian, and traveled the world to curate pieces for his shop but also to put in his home. This stained glass window was breathtaking – I’ve never seen anything like it. I just stood and imagined how it could feel to enjoy it every day and also share it with others.

    The realtor showing us the house shared a document about all the details of the fixtures in the house. When I looked down and read that this stained glass window had been brought back for the house from a trip to HOLLAND, deep inside I knew this was supposed to be our house. Of all the countries in the world…in all the houses in Rutherford County… what are the chances? WELCOME. TO. HOLLAND!

    We thank God for this new home that we love already, though we are still covered in boxes to unpack and have a bathroom renovation to tackle soon. I can’t wait for this to be a place where friends and family gather, where we pray for each other and study God’s word, where we multiply joys and divide sorrows. Glory to God for the gift of this home.


    Welcome to Holland
    ©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.

    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 flight attendant 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.

  • A WonderFULL Week

    It has been a truly amazing week. Put yourself in the backseat of my vehicle last Friday as I left Saint Joseph before dawn, and drove to Holland to pick up my nephew. We then drove to Allegan, from Allegan to Grand Rapids, from Grand Rapids back to Holland, from Holland back to Allegan, and then I drove back to Saint Joseph. I was reminded of how we would go for walks in the neighborhood with grandson Bradley when he was little. We made everything an adventure. We were not just walking, we were celebrating life.

    Last Friday, my nephew and I were not just driving, we were sharing moments and making memories.

    I have been thinking a lot about the gifts we get when we give.

    I have also been thinking about the gift of our vulnerability.

    My nephew and I ate apples. “Honeycrisp are my favorite,” he cooed.

    We munched on almonds. “Oh, I love almonds,” he announced.

    We crunched Chinese cracker/cookies and he compared them to the texture of pork rinds. “Do you like pork rinds?” he asked.

    If you have never seen it, you may want to watch Brené Brown’s TED talk “The Power of Vulnerability.” Here are some of her words:

    There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging. That’s it. They believe they’re worthy. And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we’re not worthy of connection, was something that, personally and professionally, I felt like I needed to understand better. So what I did is I took all of the interviews where I saw worthiness, where I saw people living that way, and just looked at those.

    They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating — as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, “I love you” first … the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees … the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They’re willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.

    We were so long at the Secretary of State we were late for his doctor appointment, and while we were not successful obtaining his license at that time he has it now! We knew we were going to be late, so we called. When we got there I explained everything we had been through that day to get to the doctor and why my nephew really needed to be seen that day. I also told them I know how difficult it is when someone is not able to be on time. I asked them to please do what you could.

    As we waited, we watched a baby.

    We were late for that, too, but after my nephew saw the doctor we made it to his job interview! He is still in the running for that job, and we are grateful and also for a couple of other solid opportunities.

    We finally got lunch at 5:05 pm. I know exactly what time it was because we missed happy hour at Arby’s by five minutes. I splurged for a Jamocha Shake anyway. As we ate, we marveled at all we accomplished that day and how much fun we had together.

    Brown observed another significant aspect of those who were willing to be vulnerability:

    And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and — this was the hard part — as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection.

    Tomorrow morning I will go back to Allegan. I will take gifts of bedding and towels and dishes and a coffee pot. People have been generous and we are thankful. We might again go to Holland, I don’t know for sure yet. Where ever we go, it will be an adventure.

    This evening my nephew said, “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

    I told him repayment for kindness is never necessary. I suggested he just hold his gratitude in his body and say, “I am so grateful I can feel my heart full to overflowing.”

    I know just how he feels.