I sobbed my way through the middle of the movie Wild Robot. It hit a lot of the threads of our own story, my own story, and I looked over the heads of my daughters that were leaning on me on both sides to see my husband checking to see if I was as touched as he expected I’d be. Yep.

I read the first two Wild Robot books to my kids over the summer, and they were SO fun. The kids loved them, and we were delighted to find out a movie was about to come out soon. We all went together, enjoying that we now have a theater in our remote town, that we can order popcorn, that we’re out as a family on a Saturday afternoon.

Roz is a robot that finds herself alone on an island, and she must learn to adapt to the island and to life with the animals. Her adaptation is the focus of the book, her helping task is the focus of the movie. In both tellings she ends up with an orphaned gosling as child, and the journey of raising the gosling is what hit home with me. The movie works to pull on the emotional heartstrings of parents watching the movie. The little gosling has to learn to swim, then fly, then leave on a migration that Roz cannot go on. The buildup to the little gosling taking flight and leaving is where the movie works to twist the knife for the parents: your little ones too will take flight, you too will see them go and wonder if you did enough, if they will succeed, if they love you and if they know you love them.

With my arms around a daughter on either side, I feel it.

But I was already feeling it before even that emotional moment in the movie, because of the way the movie mirrors some of the uniqueness of my life. Roz is a foreigner on the island, there is distance between her and all the island’s inhabitants. The books dwell more on Roz’s learning to build relationships and integrate into the community, the movie emphasizes the relationships she makes to build bridges for her child, a child that is ostracized largely because of her. She’s different, and so the son is different. I feel like that. I’m a foreigner here. I have spent half my entire life here, it is my home, but I’m always a foreigner and so are my kids. I, like Roz, watch my children struggle with their foreignness and try to build bridges for them so that they are able to connect and have community. And I, as a third-culture kid myself who also never felt at home in America, feel the weight of trying to prepare my children for their own migration to a culture they don’t know. How do I help them build roots and a life in a place I myself don’t understand or feel rooted in?

When Brightbill launches and Roz watches him go, wondering what is happening past where here eyes can see, I remember flying away from Papua as an 18 year old high school graduate. I left my parents, five siblings, and two of my dearest friends in a crying huddle at the Bali airport and flew half a world away from my them. I remember my dad saying he couldn’t sleep the night before, and I understand now the anxiety he must have carried. How do you launch a child so far away, into a world foreign to that child?

Brightbill, the gosling, was a runt (at least in the movie), and so Roz is helping him not only become what he was made to be (a swimming, flying, migrating goose) but has to help him overcome the weaknesses that would undo him without intervention. She enlists animals to teach him to fly, creating special courses for him to practice, supporting physically and pushing him emotionally. I watched Brightbill fly the course with tears rolling down my cheek, picturing me and my teammates and dear friends, supporting kiddos with special needs, working out zoom calls across time zones to find therapy, tutoring, coaching. You can do it, you can fly, I will pour my all into making it possible.

Even Roz’s identity in the movie hits home a little, she’s a helper robot, and in the hardest days of young motherhood that’s how it felt. I am here to help meet all of everyone’s needs, all the time.. I am your helper robot. Of course, with my arms around two sweet and loving daughters, that’s not my daily reality, but the memory of how I struggled through those hard days are enough to make the image bring a sob to my throat.

And Roz, Roz brings together the animals of the island and pushes them to overcome their predatory natures to build a community that can meet needs during suffering. I think of our task here, of people groups that are separated and sometimes hostile, of what my teammate always says of our connecting them to really see each other for the first time, of how we build shalom.

Brightbill does fly, and in the end, it is his unique understanding of the world because of being raised by a robot that leads to him being able to lead his flock through challenging situations. Overcoming his weakness as a runt makes him a unique flyer, and he is strong. I think there’s truth there. I think the unique hard things of my kids’ lives as foreigners and even working to overcomes disabilities will build a greater strength that will teach them a deeper way to lead and love. It will likely be some of the best of who they are.