The Good Shepherd Of Bummer Lambs
My neighbor called to let me know there was a lamb struggling in the farthest pasture. The little lamb’s movement had caught her eye as she looked up into our pasture from her house across the street.
I immediately rushed down through the acres and acres of grass, running toward the tiny ball of wet wool trying to get on his feet. My sheep are not stabled in a barn when they’re expecting, so they often give birth in the pasture. This particular mom had triplets, the tiniest one was not able to keep up with mom and his siblings who had already left him and were in an upper pasture.
I scooped up the tiny squirming, kicking lamb in my arms carrying him against my chest, close to my heart, as he loudly called to his mom. She looked in his direction but had already written him off as having a problem that would keep him from surviving. She wouldn’t deplete her energy or her milk supply on a lamb that she somehow knew wouldn’t survive any ways.
I am always suspicious when moms do this — separate themselves from a lamb at birth. They know long before it is apparent to me, that their little one will not survive. I know this from experience, but each time it happens I still hope and pray mom was wrong.
These lambs are called bummer lambs and are defined as a lamb that is rejected by its mother at birth. I tried to reunite this little lamb with his mom, but she clearly had no desire to nurse him, pushing him away from her with her head. Moms rarely take back a bummer lamb and the lambs usually quickly get used to their Shepherd filling in as a surrogate mom. He cried out again for his mom; she rejected him, and he settled down, nuzzled into my neck and slept.
He (Chance) didn’t take to a bottle at first and I wondered if he had a medical reason he couldn’t take nourishment. That didn’t seem to be the case. Once he got the hang of the bottle he took to it willingly, wagging his tail as he ate just as all the other lambs do as they nurse. I let him live with the flock as he grew and got stronger, and he played and ran with the other lambs. Each time he saw me he’d run to me calling out to me, his “mom”, to give him food.
Our vet couldn’t find any obvious medical reasons Chance was rejected by his mom, his heart rate and respiration were normal. He was putting on weight, eating the tall, tender grass and had energy to spare. Was mom wrong this time? I prayed it was so.
No, she wasn’t. I went out one day to feed Chance and saw his motionless wooly body lying next to the fence where he always waited for me to feed him and tell me good morning. He was curled up in a ball and seemed as if he’d just fallen asleep.
I left him there for a time so his family and pasture mates could file past him, sniff him, try to wake him up with their tiny hooves and say goodbye. Then I cradled him in my arms one last time, close to my heart, as tears escaped my eyes and flowed onto his soft, curly, earthy smelling wool. I laid his little wooly body in a grave I dug, cushioned and blanketed by the wool of his ancestors I’d saved from past shearing times.
As I covered him with the cool dirt, I realized there have been times in my life I have been the bummer lamb: the times as a child I’d felt unloved or uncared about or all alone, as if I didn’t matter or wouldn’t amount to anything. When I am going through an especially difficult time, need reassurance or comfort and love now, my Good Shepherd still cradles me in His arms close to His heart as He did when I was young.
He nourishes my soul with His love. He comforts my heart with His tender care. He never has or never will give up on or leave me, always, always, carrying me close to His heart.
He, my Good Shepherd. Me, His part-time Shepherdess, full-time sheep.
He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young. Isaiah 40:11
Jackie Deems 2022