The Little Flower

So, since I'm on a kick about nature and creation, I figured I would share this passage from St. Therese of Lisieux's "The Story of a Soul". I read it the other night and it is so perfect! It's in the beginning of the very first chapter if you want to look it up. I put in italics certain sentences that really stood out to me:

"For a long time I wondered why God showed partiality, why all souls don't recieve the same amount of graces. I was astounded to see Him lavish extraordinary favors on the Saints who had offended Him such as St. Paul and St. Augustine, and whom He so to speak forced to recieve His graces. Or when I read the life of Saints whom Our Lord was pleased to embrace from the cradle to the grave, without leaving in their path any obstacles that might hinder them from rising toward Him, and granting these souls such favors that they were unable to tarnish the immaculate brightness of their baptismal robes, I wondered why poor primitive people, for example, were dying in great number without even having heard the name of God pronounced..
Jesus consented to teach me this mystery. He placed before my eyes the book of nature; I understood that all the flowers that He created are beautiful. The brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily don't take away the perfume of the lowly violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy...I understood that if all the little flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose its springtime adornment, and the fields would no longer be sprinkled with little flowers...
So it is in the world of souls, which is Jesus' garden. 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...
I understood that Our Lord's love is revealed as well in the simplest soul who doesn't resist His grace in anything, as in the most sublime of souls. In fact, since the essence of love is to bring oneself low, if every soul were like the souls of the holy Doctors who have shed light on the Church through the clarity of their doctrine, it seems that God wouldn't come down low enough by coming only as far as their great hearts. But He created the child who doesn't know anything and only cries weakly, He created poor primitive persons who only have natural law as a guide- and it is to their hearts that He consents to come down: Here are wildflowers whose simplicity delights Him...
By bringing Himself low in this way, God shows His infinite greatness. Just as the sun shines at the same time on the tall cedars and on each little flower as if it were the only one on earth, in the same way Our Lord is concerned particularly for every soul as if there were none other like it. And just as in nature all the seasons are arranged in such a way as to cause the humblest of daisy to open on the appointed day, in the same way all things correspond to the good of each soul."


I know I've fallen into the trap of wishing I was like someone else, wishing I had their holiness or their spiritual gifts. But we have to realize that if we were all the same, if we were all roses or lilies, there would be no diversity in God's garden. We have to accept ourselves, in all of our faults and gifts, exactly as we are because in God's eyes we are magnificient. We are beautiful. We give him joy by being the flower that He created us to be, no matter if we are a lily or a simple daisy.