St. Thérèse: My Soul Mate

In her short life – she was only twenty-four when she died – St. Thérèse of Lisieux discovered profound truths, truths that I have stumbled on as well. Thérèse is my soul mate, perhaps the soul mate of many mothers.

“Everything is a grace.

Everything is the direct effect of our Father’s love – difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul’s miseries, her burdens, her needs – everything.

Because through them she learns humility, realizes her weakness.

Everything is a grace because everything is God’s gift.

I have recently discovered that my spirituality is very similar to that of St. Thérèse the Little Flower probably because I have lived with children under the age of 18 for 33 years. I think that many mothers can relate to this saint as well. She lived the little way like all people who are not rich and famous but want to serve God their loving Father through their littleness and simplicity. She chose to stay as a child in they eyes of God, performing all of her duties with love and obedience, no matter how small and insignificant they were.

Matthew 18:3: and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I like to say that a child, frog and tree are holy because they are who they called to be without a mask or false persona or large ego.

While St. Thérèse said the same thing but in different words, “Holiness consists simply in doing God’s will, and being just what God wants us to be.”

I pray now by simply resting in Him, looking into the light and His eyes and He looks at me. I smile. He smiles and immediately fills me with a surge of joy

St. Thérèse said, “For me prayer is a surge of the heart, it is a simple look towards Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”