Teresita: Our Little Flower

We are a family of five!!!

Back in August, we learned of a little girl in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who needed a family. We had been talking about adopting from the DRC for almost a year, and had just been waiting for the finances to come through. A delay in getting our tax return because of changes to the adoption tax credit that the IRS was unprepared to deal with meant that we had to wait longer than we would have liked, but finally things seemed to be coming together. After bringing Ana Luisa home, we knew that we wanted to adopt from Africa again. Although we know there is poverty everywhere, and that there are children all over the world who need homes and families, we had also seen that poverty in Africa was somehow different- it was more. We felt very strongly drawn towards Africa again, and the DRC in particular. Because they require adoptive parents to be married for at least five years, we hadn't qualified before, but with our 5th anniversary coming up in October, we were getting close. We also knew we wanted to adopt a child (or maybe two) who was waiting- one who was considered harder to place because of special needs. We spent weeks looking through waiting child photolistings, talking to various adoption agencies, and trying to figure out our next move. Then, one Friday afternoon, a few hours after Jeff had left to go on a weekend camping trip, I got a call from one of the adoption agencies I had emailed. Their Special Needs Coordinator wanted to talk to me about a baby girl that was on their list who they wanted to find a family for as soon as possible. I called Jeff to tell him about her. We started on our paperwork that next week.

For a couple weeks, we almost changed our minds. The DRC was going to be holding elections in late November, and after reading news articles and emailing some contacts in the DRC, things did not sounds good. Everyone expected violence, and many predicted that war would break out. Adoption is always risky in some way or another, and for a while, the risk seemed like more than we could handle. Finally, after much prayer and deliberation, we decided to go ahead with the adoption process. Someone, we reasoned, should take the risk for this little girl, and there was no real reason why it shouldn't be us.

Though there was some electoral violence, the results of the election went over more peacefully than expected. Our paperwork was finished in early December, and we sent the packet off to our agency. Only one document from the list was missing- our approval letter from the US government. This being our first time adopting from the DRC, we've been learning as we go along how the process works. We knew this letter wasn't necessary for the court hearing in the DRC, but thought that, as was the case for Ethiopia, we would need to have received the letter before our paperwork could be submitted for a court hearing. In mid-January we were getting frustrated that our letter was taking so long to receive. We had hoped to have it before Christmas, so our paperwork could be sent to the DRC. So you can imagine our complete shock and surprise when, on January 24th, I logged into my email one day and found an email from our agency's Congo program director with the subject heading "Pennings Adoption Decree". I clicked on the email and read: "Congrats! Receipt of this document means that you are now the legal parents in the Congo!"

That's right, we have another daughter! It turns out, our preliminary petition to adopt was submitted to the courts on October 14th, our 5th wedding anniversary. After our paperwork was received in December, our case was heard and we passed court on January 10th! There is still a ways to go before we can bring our little girl home- because of her special needs, our process will be expedited, but "expedite" in Africa is not exactly what we think of when we hear the word "expedite"! Right now, we're waiting for the courts to issue her Birth Certificate, which could take as 2-3 months. Once we have these two documents, we will submit another packet of paperwork to the US Embassy, which will then conduct an investigation to make sure the adoption was conducted ethically and everything is in order, which could also take two to three months. Once this is done, the she will be issued a US visa, and that means we can bring her home...so we're still looking at 4-6 months before she is home with us.

At this point, due to privacy concerns, we cannot share pictures or any specific information about her online (if you see us in person though, I'm sure Juan Pablo and Ana Luisa would be happy to show you pictures of their new little sister!). We did, however, want to share a little bit about the name we have chosen for her...Teresa.

St. Therese of the Child Jesus has been one of my favorite saints since I was little. For my Confirmation name, I chose the name "Therese" and St. Therese as my patron and friend. In trying to choose a name for our new daughter, we immediately thought of Therese. We love that Therese always saw herself as little. She had a particular love and devotion for the Child Jesus, and she herself always approached Jesus and our Blessed Mother as a little child. In the opening passages of her autobiography, "The Story of a Soul", she presents the image of souls as flowers in Jesus' garden, and says:

He wanted to create great saints who could be compared to lilies and roses. But He also created little ones, and these ought to be content to be daisies or violets destined to gladden God's eyes when He glances down at His feet. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wants us to be...

She refers to herself as one of these "little flowers". I've been thinking of our little girl as one of these little flowers...she is little in size, we know, but beyond that, the situation she has been born into also makes her little. She is like a little flower growing in the middle of a busy road, in danger of being trampled and destroyed because of the sin that exists in this world and what that has meant for the Congo. Despite being one of the richest countries in natural resources, the DRC is currently the 2nd poorest country in the world (Zimbabwe is the poorest), with almost 70% of the population living on less than a dollar a day. It recently ranked last on the UN's Human Development Index. One in every five children dies before the age of five. Rates of violence against women are so high, that it is considered the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman. This is the where she is now. And yet, God in his infinite love and goodness towards us, is gently lifting the little flower out from this dangerous place, and allowing her to be transplanted into our own little garden. We know the process will be painful- our little flower will need to be uprooted, taken out of her birth country, away from her birth culture, away from everything familiar, and then it will take time for her roots to take hold in the new little garden of our family. We hope and pray that the soil she find here will nourish this little flower and preserve her beauty, that she may also become a saint, just like her patron.

Another reason why we love Therese's name, is because Blessed Teresa of Calcutta took Therese's name as hers (she opted for the Spanish spelling because another nun in the convent already had the name Therese). On the outside, the lives of St. Therese and Blessed Teresa seem completely different. When Therese died at age 24, she was virtually unknown outside the walls of the Carmelite cloister where she had spent the last nine years. It was after her death, when her writings were published, that she became well known and loved. She said that she wanted to spend her heaven doing good on earth, and she has been true to that promise. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, on the other hand, lived to be 87 years old, and spent most of her life traveling all over the world serving the poorest of the poor (which again, makes me think of our little daughter), and met with some of the most rich, powerful and influential people in the world. Interiorly though, it was the same thing that led both Therese and Teresa to holiness- doing little things with great love. Both sought to become more little, more humble, and thus to be able to love God more in everything they did. This is what we want for ourselves, and for our children.

I've been re-reading "The Story of a Soul", and encourage anyone who has not read it (or who has not read it recently), to read this beautiful work. Last time I read it, we did not have children yet, and in reading it again, I have been struck by the beautiful depiction of Therese's family life. Though her mother died when Therese was only four years old, her parents truly inspired their five daughters to strive for holiness. The entire family wanted only to love God, and to be reunited one day in heaven. On earth, they knew each others souls and were each others greatest encouragement and consolation. When describing the time between when she enter Carmel and when her sister Celine was able to enter six years later after caring for their father until his death, Therese writes,

Far from separating us, the grille of Carmel united our souls more strongly. we had the same thoughts, the same desires, the same love for Jesus and for souls....When Celine and Therese talked together, never one word of the things of the earth came into their conversations, which were already completely in heaven.

This is what Jeff and I want for our little family- heaven. We don't care what sorts of earthly achievement each of us attain- what level of education our children achieve, what sorts of jobs and salaries any of us have, or what material possessions we attain. None of that matters. What we want is for all of us to be like a bouquet of beautiful little flowers, to become who we were created to be, to be holy, to live for God alone, and to become saints and meet one day again in heaven. And we want for our family to do that together- God put us all together for a reason, and we want to journey together. Even when our children grow up, if they end up far away from us or from each other, we hope that just as for Therese and Celine, our souls would be united more strongly, with the same love for Jesus. We want for every decision that we make, as spouses, as parents, for our children and our family, to be made with heaven in mind. Just writing that down sounds overwhelming and daunting...and that is why we need to remember Therese, and remember that it is in being simple, in becoming little, in making little sacrifices and loving in all the little daily things that we do, that by God's grace our entire family can be with Him forever one day. When Blessed Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize she was asked "What can we do to promote world peace?" Her response was, "Go home and love your family." That is what we hope to do. We are naming our little daughter Teresa, not just to give her two powerful intercessors and friends in Therese and Teresa and hope that she may be inspired by their example, but also as a way to dedicate ourselves and our family to following the example of these two great saints.

And so, we ask you, our friends and family, to please also pray for us and for our little Teresita, for her protection over the next few months while we wait to bring her home, that the next steps to bringing her home would go smoothly, and most of all, that God would give us the grace and strength that we need to care for this new little flower in our garden!

St. Therese and Blessed Teresa, pray for us!