Les Miserables, Adoption, and the Gift of Family

If I was a good blogger I'd write about the Golden Globes, 10 tips for losing weight in the new year, and the "freezing weather" in Southern California.  But I'm taking this week to talk about adoption: Les Miserables, racial profiling, and blood relations.

Like many people, Bookguy and I went the day after Christmas to see the much anticipated movie, Les Miserables.  Based on Victor Hugo's classic novel, Les Mis is one of my favorite broadway productions of all time (I first saw it in London in 1997).  This version, on the big screen as a musical, was truly EPIC.  (Not surprising at all that Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway earned themselves Golden Globes for best actor and best supporting actress.)  While I could rave about the musical performance of the cast, the amazing singing, acting, and construction of the movie, what struck me this time in Les Mis was the beautiful adoption story between Jean Valjean and Cosette.

I watched Jean Valjean carry a scared, little Cosette, she in her filthy rags and he in his mayor's attire, as they begin the important, complicated process of attachment.  He tells her to call him papa and buys her a doll.  Sweet Cosette, thrilled to get away from her wicked, greedy guardians, willingly goes to the care of a stranger.  They find shelter at the convent in Paris, secluded from all that might twist and tear and divide the two.  She needs him desperately.  She's vulnerable, alone, and orphaned.  But he needs her too.  He's a lonely, escaped convict, unable to marry, never to have his "own" in the world.

So God brings them together, daddy and daughter, as family.

Isn't it SO refreshing to see a movie paint adoption in a loving light?  I'm sick of all of the painful, hurtful adoption stories depicted in movies and media.  The latest is the horror movie Mama, just released, about two girls orphaned after their parents die, taken in by their aunt and uncle, and then terrorized by a demonic presence.  A while back there was the psychological thriller, Orphan, about a 9 year-old psychotic girl adopted from a Russian orphanage.  And even recently in the movie The Avengers, there was the 'he's adopted' line that stirred up a lot of controversy in adoptive communities.    

I absorb Les Mis, the beauty of God making family in grace and restoration.  I study and identify with the lyrics that Jean Valjean sings to his Cosette when they first meet.  I hear the fear of attachment in his voice, the weight of responsibility, the pain of his own loneliness, the happiness of so much love welling up inside him, and the wonder of the gift that is adoption.  It's breathtaking.



Suddenly I see
Suddenly it starts
When two anxious hearts
Beat as one.
Yesterday I was alone
Today you walk beside me
Something still unclear
Something not yet here
Has begun.
Suddenly the world
Seems a different place
Somehow full of grace
And delight.
How was I to know
That so much love
Was held inside me?
Something fresh and young
Something still unsung
Fills the night.
How was I to know at last
That happiness can come so fast?
Trusting me the way you do
I'm so afraid of failing you
Just a child who cannot know
That danger follows where I go
There are shadows everywhere
And memories I cannot share
Nevermore alone
Nevermore apart
You have warmed my heart
Like the sun.
You have brought the gift of life
And love so long denied me.
Suddenly I see
What I could not see
Something suddenly
Has begun.

Tears trickle down my face because that's how adoption should be painted.  And if it was crafted that way more often, everyone would want a piece of it.

Family is brought together by something, Someone, bigger.  Adoption is more than worth it.