I Still Would Have Chosen You!

I know the picture above is hard to read so here are the words that hit my heart hard and I knew Emma was ment for our family.

If before you were born, I could have gone to heaven and saw all the beautiful souls, I still would have chosen you. If God had told me, "This soul would one day need extra care and needs", I still would have chosen you. If He had told me, "This soal may make your heart bleed", I still would have chosen you. If He had told me, "This soul would make you question the depth of your faith", I still would have chosen you. If He had told me, "This soul would make tears flow from your eyes that could fill a river", I still would have chosen you. If He had told me, "This soul may one day make you witness overbearing suffering", I still would have chosen you. If He had told me, "All that you know to be normal would drastically change", I still would have chosen you. Of course, even though I would have chosen you, I know it was God who chose me for you.

To go along with this picture I would also like to post a little story that a friend and my brother sent to us (one day apart, we were ment to read this story) to read shortly after we learned about Emma's condition. It is a great analogy on our life and our future we loved reading every word of it.

Here is the link where I read the story and I have also pasted the story below:
http://www.our-kids.org/archives/Holland.html

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by
Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

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.