Thanks to the work of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux and their helpers, the first one hundred letters written by St. Therese of Lisieux are available online in English.  Please read her New Year's letter to her uncle and aunt, Isidore and Celine Guerin, written December 30, 1889.  She wrote at the end of the year 1889; the "bitter chalice" to which she refers is the illness of her father, who on February 12, 1889 had to be interned in a psychiatric hospital at Caen, where he remained for more than three years.