St Teresa praises God for the marvels of His grace that unabled her to do all the works. She admits that on her own she could do nothing. What a great humility. 
O my Lord! What a shame it is to see so much wickedness and to tell about some grains of sand, which even then I didn't lift from the ground for Your service, since everything I did was enveloped in a thousand miseries!.
The waters of Your grace didn't flow yet under these grains of sand in order to raise them up. O my Creator! Who could find among so many evils something of substance to relate, since I am telling about the great favours I've received from You! So it is, my Lord, that I don't know how my heart can bear it or how anyone who reads this can fail to abhor me in observing that such marvelous favours were so poorly repaid and that I have no shame, in the end, to recount these services as my own. Yes, I am ashamed, my Lord; but having nothing else to tell about the part I played makes me speak of such lowly beginning so that anyone who did great things in the beginning may have hope; since it seems the Lord has taken my early actions into account. He will do so more with theirs. May it please His Majesty to give me grace so that I might not always remain at the beginning, amen. (Life 31:25).
The waters of Your grace didn't flow yet under these grains of sand in order to raise them up. O my Creator! Who could find among so many evils something of substance to relate, since I am telling about the great favours I've received from You! So it is, my Lord, that I don't know how my heart can bear it or how anyone who reads this can fail to abhor me in observing that such marvelous favours were so poorly repaid and that I have no shame, in the end, to recount these services as my own. Yes, I am ashamed, my Lord; but having nothing else to tell about the part I played makes me speak of such lowly beginning so that anyone who did great things in the beginning may have hope; since it seems the Lord has taken my early actions into account. He will do so more with theirs. May it please His Majesty to give me grace so that I might not always remain at the beginning, amen. (Life 31:25).
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