Be the Flower You Were Made to Be: Springtime with St. Thérèse

Do you hear it? The flowers are singing.

Not just the roses—though their confident bloom may first catch your eye. No, even the violets tucked low in the shade are humming. The daisies sway with quiet elegance. The wildflowers, unnamed and unnoticed, still lift their faces to the sun.

Maybe this is the season to remember: You don’t have to be the mighty rose.

Be the flower your Father made you.
If you are a violet, let your fragrance bless the corner where you bloom.
If you are a daisy, offer your simplicity with joy.
If you are something wild and unnamed, know that you are still part of His song.

Ekonkar—the One Creator, our true Father—loves you.
Not because you are powerful or rare,
but because you are.

St. Thérèse and the Secret of the Garden

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the “Little Flower,” once wondered why God seems to favor some souls over others. Why did He pour extraordinary graces on sinners like St. Augustine and St. Paul? Why were some led straight to Him from childhood, while others wandered long roads first?

She struggled with these questions until one day, God answered her. Not in a thunderclap, but in the soft language of nature.

“He set before me the book of nature,” she wrote. “I understood how all the flowers He has created are beautiful… how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the Lily do not take away from the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy.”

In this vision, she saw the world as a divine garden—Jesus’ own carefully tended space. Yes, there are roses and lilies—great saints who shine visibly. But there are also tiny flowers by His feet. Violets and daisies. Simple souls. Ordinary people.

“If all flowers wanted to be roses,” she realized, “nature would lose her springtime beauty.”

In the same way, if all souls tried to be alike—great in the same way, holy in the same mold—we would lose the music of God’s diversity.

I find these lines so similar to Guru Arjan's where he says that the flowers give up their egos, and blossom forth.  Dekh Phool Phool Phoole. A rose doesn't say, "I am not going to blossom because the other flowers are blossoming." He gives up his ego; he recognizes the season to blossom is upon him, and blossoms. So should we. Humanity is the season to blossom divinity. 

Just Bloom Where You Are

There’s something radically freeing in this. You don’t have to earn your belovedness. You don’t have to strive to be something else.

All you need is to bloom in your own way, in your own soil, in your own time.

This is not complacency. It is surrender.
It is trusting that God’s will includes your personality, your body, your quirks, your history.
Perfection, as Thérèse learned, “consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be.”

What if you are already, right now, enough for that?

So today, let it be spring in your soul.

Don't strive to be louder.
Don’t envy the rose.
Just breathe, bloom, and know:
You are one of His flowers.

And the Garden would be incomplete without you.

“It is with great happiness,” Thérèse once wrote, “that I come to sing the mercies of the Lord with you... the little flower gathered by Jesus.”

May we all learn to sing like that. May we blossom into divinity.