Why I love Lambert

A couple nights ago we decided to do a family movie time with the kids.  We made some pizza and the kids picked out “The Fox and the Hound”.  They enjoyed it well enough, but after the final credits rolled I remembered there were some Disney shorts left to play.  So we sat with our three adopted kids snuggled in our laps and watched “Lambert the Sheepish Lion” together.  And (of course) I cried.

As I’ve discussed before, publicly stating you enjoy something with an adoption theme can get you critiqued.  I’m sure there are ways this isn’t a great adoption correlation and probably somebody out there gets offended by Lambert.  I don’t care.  I love him.

For those of you who maybe don’t watch a lot of cartoons from the 1950s, Lambert is a lion who is mistakenly delivered by the stork to a flock of sheep.  He is raised by his mother sheep who loves him dearly and is fiercely protective of him, although the rest of the flock isn’t as accepting.  He endures some taunts and feels left out while trying to act like a sheep.  Then his mother is threatened by a wolf and the “sheepish” lion runs to her defense.  Instead of attacking the wolf, he butts him just like a sheep would.  That’s when I get all misty-eyed.

Foster kids and adopted kids sometimes carry the weight of other people’s assumptions.  There are those who think they are inherently damaged because of their pasts.  They have drug abusing or criminal parents.  They were born with drugs in their system.  They were the product of rape at worst, irresponsible sex at best.  They were sexually abused or physically abused or horribly neglected.  And that’s just their history.

Anyone considering adoption is likely to have heard a myriad of horror stories about “those kids”.  Everybody knows somebody’s uncle’s sister’s nephew who adopted a kid and it “just didn’t take.”  You hear stories about kids that didn’t bond, kids that had severe behavioral problems, disabilities, kids who did harm to the family pet.  It’s enough to terrify anybody away from willingly taking one of “those kids” into their home.  You must be crazy.

Almost like raising a lion.

I am right there with Lambert’s mama sheep.  When somebody implies my child doesn’t belong to me or might end up being a problem, my defenses go up.  I know I can’t protect them from hearing those kinds of words or having to answer difficult questions.  Especially as parents of transracially adopted children, we can’t deny that our family wasn’t formed in the usual way.  People will make assumptions and I am often surprised when they work out those troubling thoughts in front of my children.  We are happy to challenge their assumptions and I absolutely do relish the opportunity to talk about adoption, but it’s discouraging to realize how many people haven’t learned what I know about a child’s ability to work past their history and a parent’s ability to love someone in spite of AND because of their differences.

I remember one really powerful moment early in my days as a housemother in a boys home.  I had some fear before we arrived.  What if one of the boys got violent?  What if I woke up to a child with a knife standing over my bed?  I pushed these fears down, but I was still just a 22 year-old woman living in a house of mostly teenage boys.  It was an act of faith to trust God wanted me there even when I was intimidated by having this mothering role in the lives of these young men.

Then one day I was walking with this group of boys through a crowded outdoor public area.  Brian and I had taken the boys out for lunch together and then Brian saw the blood mobile and decided to go donate. I was left supervising this crew of young men on my own as we tried to kill time until Brian was finished. We walked up and down this little strip-mall area and then got back in our vans to head home.  When we got back the boys told me, “Mrs. Maralee, there were some guys looking at you.  Like, LOOKING at you.  Don’t worry.  We scared them off.”  From that moment on my perspective was changed.  My little lions had pushed that wolf right off the cliff, protecting their Mama Sheep.

I’m not saying these kids were perfect or that I didn’t have scary times.  They made bad choices at times and the organization we worked with tried hard to screen out kids that needed a more serious level of supervision.  There are children who need greater help than can be safely accomplished in your traditional family environment.

But for the vast majority of our foster and adopted kids they are little lions—fierce, strong, brave—looking for their Mama Sheep to love them for who they are and bring out their best qualities.  In return they will love and protect you, too.  A good mother will make it her goal to help her child achieve his best and not feel ashamed of the ways he is different from his parents.  When there has been healing even his difficult history can be a source of strength and pride as he knows you love him for who he is.  Our goal isn’t to make them sheep like us, but to help them see the value in who God made them and to choose to use their gifts for good.

It may be scary to take the risk of loving a child with a history, but when you’ve watched them shove that wolf off the cliff for you, you’ll thank me.