Thérèse of Lisieux

Let me be honest: when I first encountered Thérèse of Lisieux, I hated her.

Not disliked. Hated.

The Little Flower. The roses. The "spiritual childhood." The constant talk about being small and weak. The whole aesthetic of it—saccharine, sentimental, infantilizing.

I'm a millennial woman trying to be taken seriously in a world that already dismisses women as emotional and childish. The last thing I needed was a saint telling me to become like a little child and scatter flowers.

It felt regressive. It felt like exactly the kind of femininity the patriarchy wants: sweet, passive, non-threatening. The kind of "goodness" that makes women small and keeps them quiet.

So I rejected Thérèse. Wrote her off as pre-feminist piety, a relic of a more naive time.

And then I actually read her autobiography.

And I realized: I'd completely misunderstood her. And my hatred revealed more about me than about her.

Let's talk about it.

The Sweetness Problem

Thérèse is often depicted with roses, wearing white and blue, looking angelic and soft. Her nickname is "The Little Flower." Her most famous quotes sound like Hallmark cards:

• "Do small things with great love."
• "The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent."
• "Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word."

Reading this makes me want to throw up a little. It's so sweet. So soft. So... nice.

And in our current cultural moment—where we value toughness, sarcasm, edge—niceness feels weak. Sweetness feels naive. Talking about flowers and childhood feels infantile.

We prefer our saints gritty:

• Joan of Arc in armor
• Francis kissing lepers
• Maximilian Kolbe in Auschwitz
• Augustine wrestling with lust

These are real saints. Complicated. Struggling. Messy.

But Thérèse? She's just... sweet. Right?

Wrong.

What I Missed: Thérèse Was Dying

Here's what changes everything: Thérèse wrote most of Story of a Soul—the autobiography where all the "sweetness" comes from—while dying of tuberculosis.

She was coughing up blood. She couldn't breathe. She was in constant pain. And she wrote about roses and love and trusting God like a little child.

That's not saccharine. That's fucking hardcore.

It's easy to be sweet when life is easy. It's easy to talk about God's love when you feel loved. It's easy to trust when things are going well.

Thérèse was sweet while suffocating. She wrote about God's goodness while experiencing what she called a "trial of faith"—eighteen months where God felt completely absent, where heaven seemed like a lie, where everything she believed felt like delusion.

And she chose sweetness anyway.

That's not weakness. That's steel wrapped in silk.

Spiritual Childhood: Not What You Think

The thing that bothered me most was the "spiritual childhood" concept. Become like a little child. Trust like a child. Be small and weak.

This seemed like exactly what society already demands of women: Be sweet. Be small. Don't be threatening. Let the men (or God) take care of you.

But then I read what Thérèse actually meant.

She wasn't talking about regression or dependence. She was talking about radical honesty about human limitation.

Adults pretend. We perform competence. We hide weakness. We project strength. We earn our worth.

Children don't. Children know they're dependent. They know they can't save themselves. They ask for help without shame.

Thérèse was saying: Stop pretending you're self-sufficient. Stop trying to earn God's love. Admit you need help. That's not weakness—that's reality.

She wrote: "To be little is... to recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from God as a little child expects everything from its father."

This isn't passivity. This is clarity. This is saying: "I can't save myself. I'm not the hero of this story. And that's okay."

And honestly? In a culture that tells us we can do anything, that we just need to work harder, that failure is our fault—this is actually radical.

The Roses Aren't Cute—They're Subversive

Thérèse's metaphor of "scattering flowers" sounds like something you'd embroider on a pillow. But read what she actually meant:

"Love proves itself by deeds. How am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers—that is, not allowing one little sacrifice to escape, not one look, one word, profiting by all the smallest things and doing them through love."

Translation: Every tiny thing matters. Every choice to be kind when you want to be cruel. Every moment of patience when you want to scream. Every decision to love when you'd rather hate.

This is radical because it says: You don't need a platform to matter. You don't need recognition to be significant. Your hidden acts of love count.

In an age of social media, where we're all performing our lives for validation, this is actually countercultural.

Thérèse is saying: Do good things no one will see. Love people who won't thank you. Scatter flowers in secret. God sees. That's enough.

That's not sentimental. That's the opposite of our influencer culture.

She Wasn't Always Sweet

Here's what the sanitized versions of Thérèse skip: She was difficult.

She was jealous of her sisters. She was sensitive to criticism. She had a temper. She struggled with pride.

In the convent, one nun irritated her so much that Thérèse had to actively work to not show her annoyance. Another sister made clicking sounds during prayer that drove Thérèse crazy.

Her response? She didn't pray for patience and then magically feel loving. She chose to smile at the irritating sister. She chose to stay silent when she wanted to complain.

She didn't feel differently. She acted differently despite her feelings.

This is important: Thérèse's "Little Way" isn't about having sweet feelings. It's about choosing loving actions despite bitter feelings.

She's not saying "Be naturally nice." She's saying "Choose kindness even when everything in you wants to be petty."

That's harder. And more honest.

The Darkness We Ignore

For the last eighteen months of her life, Thérèse experienced what she called the "tunnel"—a complete loss of faith.

She couldn't feel God's presence. Heaven seemed like a lie. Prayer felt empty. Everything she'd believed her whole life seemed like delusion.

She wrote: "When I sing of the happiness of heaven and the eternal possession of God, I feel no joy, for I sing simply of what I want to believe."

Read that again. She sang of what she wanted to believe. Not what she felt. Not what she experienced.

She had zero emotional or experiential confirmation. Just a choice to keep singing anyway.

And she kept writing sweetly about God's love. While feeling nothing.

That's not sentimentality. That's existential courage.

What Her Sweetness Actually Costs

Here's what I eventually understood: Thérèse's sweetness wasn't natural disposition. It was spiritual discipline.

She chose to frame her suffering as gift. She chose to interpret her limitations as invitation to trust. She chose to see God's love when she felt abandoned.

These were choices. Hard choices. Choices she had to remake every day.

Modern therapeutic culture says: "Honor your feelings. Express your anger. Don't suppress your truth."

And there's wisdom in that. Toxic positivity is real. Spiritual bypassing is real.

But Thérèse shows another possibility: Sometimes choosing a different narrative—a narrative of trust and love—is an act of resistance, not repression.

She wasn't denying her pain. She was refusing to let pain have the last word.

She wasn't suppressing her feelings. She was choosing not to be ruled by them.

Is this always the right approach? No. Sometimes we need to rage, grieve, protest.

But sometimes—especially in situations we can't change—choosing gratitude and trust is the most powerful thing we can do.

Why We Hate Sweetness

I think modern people hate Thérèse's sweetness because we associate sweetness with weakness. And we value strength.

We want badass saints. Warriors. Rebels. People who fight.

But Thérèse shows a different kind of strength: The strength to remain soft in a world that hardens you.

It's easy to become cynical. It's easy to become bitter. It's easy to see the world's darkness and harden your heart.

What's hard—what takes real courage—is to see the darkness and choose hope anyway. To experience suffering and choose trust anyway. To be hurt and choose love anyway.

Cynicism is self-protection. Bitterness is armor.

Sweetness—chosen sweetness, disciplined sweetness—is vulnerability. And vulnerability is terrifying.

Maybe we hate Thérèse because she reminds us of a softness we've lost. A capacity for wonder and trust we've buried under layers of irony and self-protection.

The Feminist Question

But what about the gender stuff? Isn't "spiritual childhood" just patriarchy repackaged?

I wrestled with this. And here's where I landed:

If men are also called to spiritual childhood—and they are—then it's not gendered.

Jesus told everyone—men and women—"Unless you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

Paul called himself a "child" in Christ. Benedict's Rule calls monks to obedience like children.

So if men are supposed to be spiritually childlike, it's not about enforcing feminine passivity. It's about human dependence on God.

The problem is when this gets applied selectively—when women are told to be childlike and submissive while men are allowed to be adults with authority.

But that's not Thérèse's fault. That's patriarchy distorting her teaching.

Properly understood, spiritual childhood is equally humbling for everyone: No one earns God's love. No one saves themselves. We're all dependent. Men and women alike.

What Thérèse Actually Offers Modern People

So after years of hating her and then reading her and now... actually kind of loving her... here's what I think Thérèse offers:

1. Permission to be small. You don't have to be impressive. You don't have to change the world. Your small life matters.

2. An alternative to hustle culture. You don't have to earn worth. You don't have to optimize and achieve. You can just be, and that's enough.

3. A path for ordinary people. Most of us won't do dramatic things. But we can do small things with love. And that's a legitimate spiritual path.

4. Freedom from perfectionism. Thérèse didn't get holiness right. She struggled. But she trusted God to work with her limitations. So can we.

5. Resistance to cynicism. In a world that rewards edge and irony, choosing tenderness is radical.

6. Honesty about suffering. Thérèse doesn't deny pain or spiritualize it away. She just refuses to let it be the whole story.

Is She Too Sweet?

So: Is Thérèse too sweet?

Or are we too cynical?

I think it's both.

Yes, some presentations of Thérèse are saccharine and sanitized. The greeting-card version of her is annoying.

But the real Thérèse—the one who chose sweetness while coughing blood, who wrote about trust while doubting everything, who scattered flowers while suffocating—that Thérèse is fierce.

And yes, we're too cynical. We've confused hardness with strength. We've mistaken irony for intelligence. We've forgotten that tenderness can be courageous.

Maybe Thérèse's gift is this: She shows us that you can be both strong and soft. That sweetness can be chosen. That love can be discipline.

You don't have to become saccharine. You don't have to suddenly start liking flower metaphors.

But maybe you can try:

• Doing one small kind thing today without posting about it
• Trusting just a little when everything in you wants to despair
• Choosing a grateful interpretation when a cynical one is easier
• Being gentle with yourself when you fail

That's the Little Way.

Not syrup. Not sentimentality.

Just small choices toward love, again and again, until they become who you are.

My Conversion to the Little Flower

I'll end with this: I don't love everything about Thérèse. Some of her writing still makes me cringe. The cutesy imagery still bothers me sometimes.

But I've come to respect her deeply. Even love her.

Because I've realized: The hardest thing in the world is to remain tender. To stay open. To choose trust.

And Thérèse did that until her last breath.

That's not weakness. That's warrior-level strength wrapped in roses.

So yeah. I'm Team Little Flower now.

Not because I think everyone needs to be sweet. But because I think we all need to be reminded:

Small things done with love matter. Hidden acts count. You don't need to be impressive to be beloved. Trust is brave. And sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is choose tenderness in a world that wants you hard.

Scatter your flowers, friends.

Even if it feels silly.

Even if no one sees.

Even if you're not sure it matters.

It does.

A Prayer for Cynics (Including Me)

God,

I'm not good at sweetness. I'm better at sarcasm. I'm more comfortable with edge than with tenderness.

But maybe Thérèse is right. Maybe the hard thing— the brave thing— is to stay soft.

So help me scatter flowers, even when it feels silly.

Help me do small things with love, even when they feel pointless.

Help me trust like a child, even when adult me knows better.

And when I fail— when I'm petty or bitter or cynical or hard—

Remind me that Your love isn't based on my performance.

I don't have to earn it. I don't have to be perfect. I can just be small, and broken, and trying.

And that's enough.

Through Thérèse, who knew she was small and loved anyway,

Amen.