Though her older sister Celine wanted to enter the Carmel monastery too, she bowed to Therese’s  ardent desire and supported her vocation as if it were her own. Therese, now 14, approached her father with her desire in hope and fear, praying for guidance all that Pentacost day she chose to tell him.

Louis Martin saw the tears in his daughter’s eyes and as she told him her vocation, his eyes became wet as well. He did not speak against it, but wondered if she was too young yet. Picking a young lily he uprooted it instead (which seemed to make it ready to transplant), explaining to Therese how carefully God had created and preserved it until now. Therese saw her life told in that flower, later attaching it to a picture of Our Lady of Victories; as she wrote this, she wondered at its now rootless, broken stalk as, “God’s way of telling me that it will not be long before He servers the roots of His little flower, and that she will not be left on earth to fade.”

Therese did not expect the opposition of her uncle who thought of the imprudence of allowing a child so young to enter such a strict religious Order, saying, “Only a miracle would make him change his mind.” Therese reflected that, “before allowing a single ray of hope to shine upon my soul, Our Lord made me endure…a martyrdom.”