The Fistful of Dandelions: The Paralysis of the "Perfect Motive"

Every parent knows the moment. You are standing at the kitchen sink, or trying to answer an email, or just attempting to think one coherent thought, when a small hand tugs at your shirt. You look down, and there it is: a clenched fist holding the saddest little bouquet you have ever seen. Three dandelions, already wilting. Stems crushed and weeping that bitter white sap onto small palms. A single rogue blade of grass thrown in for good measure.

And the child looks up at you with absolute, undiluted joy. For you.

What do you do? Do you inspect the offering? Do you say, “Well, the stems are crushed, and dandelions are technically weeds, and you have grass stains on your shirt now, which means I’ll have to do laundry”? Do you furrow your brow and ask whether the child gave them with sufficiently pure motives, or whether perhaps there was some self-interest mixed in, some hope of being praised?

Of course not. You kneel down. You take the crushed, weeping, weedy little bouquet as though it were the rarest orchid in the world. And you are undone by it.

This is the picture I want you to hold in your mind, because it is, I am increasingly convinced, the picture closest to the truth about how God receives what we give Him.

 

The Tyranny of the Pure Motive

There is a particular spiritual sickness that afflicts thoughtful souls, and it goes something like this: I cannot do this good thing until I am sure I am doing it for the right reasons.

The act itself is fine. It might even be holy. But somewhere underneath, you detect a flicker of self-regard, a whisper of “won’t this make me look good,” a faint shadow of pride or fear or self-interest, and so you stop. You will not act until the motive is clean.

The trouble is that the motive is never clean. Not all the way down. Not for anyone.

Saint Paul, who had as honest a self-knowledge as any saint who ever lived, wrote: "I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me" (1 Corinthians 4:3-4).

Paul says he cannot find anything against himself, and in the very next breath says this does not prove him innocent. He knew that his self-examination, however rigorous, could not reach all the way to the bottom of his own heart. Only the Lord could do that.

And so Paul did not wait. He preached. He wrote letters. He suffered. He acted. He left the judging to God and got on with the loving.

If Paul could not certify his own motives, what makes us think we can certify ours?

And if we resolve never to act until we have certified them, what we are actually resolving is never to act at all.

The enemy of souls is delighted with this arrangement. He could not stop us with our sins, so he has stopped us with our scruples. He could not get us to do evil, so he has gotten us to do nothing in the name of doing only what is purely good.

This is a trap dressed up as virtue. It looks like humility. It feels like seriousness. It is, in fact, a refusal to be a child.

 

What the Little Way Actually Says

Thérèse of Lisieux is so often domesticated in our imaginations, turned into a porcelain statue with a faint smile and an armful of roses. But the real Thérèse was a fierce realist about her own weakness. She watched herself fumble her tiny offerings constantly. She noted, with disarming honesty, that she lost the little peace these slender sacrifices brought her, and that she often failed even at the smallest acts of love she set out to perform.

And here is the astonishing thing: she was not discouraged by this.

She did not stand frozen at the threshold of every small sacrifice, demanding that her motive be certified pure before she would offer it.

She did not require her love to be flawless before she would let it out the door. She offered what she had, imperfections and all, and when she fumbled she simply tried again, without drama, without the endless self-interrogation that turns the spiritual life into an interrogation room with no exit.

This is what the “little way” actually means. It does not mean doing small things instead of great things. It means doing the things you can do, however small, without waiting for yourself to become great enough or pure enough to do them well.

It means handing the Father your fistful of crushed dandelions and letting Him take it from there.

The genius of Thérèse is that she saw something most of us miss: God is not at the top of a staircase with a clipboard. He is at the bottom, with His arms open.

 

The Father Who Is Not Grading

Listen to how Jesus describes the Father to us: "Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Matthew 7:9-11).

Notice the logic. Jesus does not say, “You, being so wonderful and pure, give good gifts.” He says, “You, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children.” Even imperfect parents, even parents whose love is mixed with frustration and self-interest and exhaustion, still kneel down and take the crushed dandelions with delight. How much more, Jesus says. How much more does the Father.

If a human father, whose motives are tangled and whose patience is thin, can receive his child’s offering with joy, then the Father whose love is unmixed and whose patience is infinite is not standing over your every act of love with a magnifying glass, looking for the speck of self-interest that will disqualify it.

He is not grading the purity of your intentions. He is receiving the love of His child.

 

The Two Scruples, One Cure

There are two scruples that paralyze us, and they look like opposites but they have the same root.

The first is the scruple of greatness: I cannot do this small thing because it is not grand enough to matter. You will not pray the simple prayer because it is not eloquent enough. You will not perform the small kindness because it is not heroic enough. You will not offer the modest sacrifice because it is not worthy of being offered.

The second is the scruple of paralysis: I cannot do this thing because my motives are not pure enough to deserve it. You will not act until you have purified yourself first. You will not love until you can love perfectly. You will not give until you can give without any trace of self-interest.

Both scruples have the same root, and they have the same cure. The root is the idea that you must present yourself to God already worthy. The cure is to stop trying.

Be little. Be weak. Offer your little, imperfect, ordinary love. And let the arms of Jesus do the rest.

Saint Paul put it this way: "Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Paul did not say he was content with his weakness once he had overcome it. He said he was content with his weakness now, in its present and continuing reality, because that weakness was the very place where Christ’s strength was made perfect.

The mixed motive is part of the weakness. The fumbled sacrifice is part of the weakness. The dandelions are crushed. And it is precisely there, in the crushing, that the Father bends down.

 

Living the Dandelion Life

How do you live this? Let me offer some concrete suggestions.

First, act on the love you have, not the love you wish you had. When the prompt to do a kind thing arises, do not stop to examine whether your motives are pure enough to merit doing it. Just do it. Offer it as it is. If it turns out you did it partly for the wrong reasons, you can repent of that later. But do not let the fear of impure motives become the impurity that prevents the love.

Second, when you fumble, do what Thérèse did: try again, without drama. No long self-interrogation. No spiraling examination of why you failed and what it says about your soul. Just notice the fumble, accept it, and pick up the next dandelion. The saint of the little way did not become a saint by never failing at her tiny sacrifices. She became a saint by refusing to let the failures discourage her.

Third, picture the Father at the bottom of the stairs, not the top. When you find yourself climbing, exhausted, toward a God you imagine waiting with a clipboard, stop. Look down. He is not where you thought He was. He is right here, where the dandelions grow, arms already open, waiting for you to stop performing and let yourself be picked up.

Fourth, give yourself permission to be a child. Not childish. Childlike. A child does not ask whether his bouquet is worthy of his father. A child does not interrogate his own motives before giving a hug. A child simply gives what he has, because the giving is the love.

Fifth, when the enemy whispers that your offering is too small, too mixed, too unworthy, recognize the voice for what it is. The accuser does not always tempt us toward sin. Sometimes he tempts us away from love by convincing us our love is not pure enough to count. Do not believe him. The dandelions count. The crushed stems count. The grass stains count. They all count, because the Father is not grading them. He is receiving them.

You will never act with perfectly pure motives this side of Heaven. Not even the saints did. The answer is not to purify the motive first and then act. The answer is to act, to do the small loving thing, and to offer it, mixed motives and all, to the One who is not standing over you with an inspection sheet but kneeling down with open hands.

He can purify what you cannot. Your job is not to present Him with a flawless gift.

Your job is to bring Him the dandelions.