Por Amor a Dios

FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 4 Issue

Olivia Saenz wrestled with a paradox that gnawed at her conscience. "Las cosas de Dios no se venden." God's things aren't for sale. The pandemic had dismantled her husband's employment, and she harbored dreams of launching a spiritual boutique. But commercializing devotion felt like desecration.

But her hands ached to create.  To string together beads and craft something beautiful from wood and wire. She prayed for clarity, for permission, for something to tell her this wasn't sacrilege.

She asked God for a sign.

Late one night, thumbing through Facebook in the dark, she found it. Her friend Zulma had posted about courage. About doing what terrifies you because it's what you love.

That was the sign.

July 9, 2020. Olivia commandeered a room in her house, installed shelves, and inaugurated La Tiendita de Olivia. Her family rallied behind her ambition.

She made handmade rosaries alongside her husband who made wooden crosses. Slowly, she incorporated religious jewelry. Then prayer cards and vials of holy water. The inventory proliferated until every surface groaned beneath the weight of sacred objects. Strangers began appearing at her doorbell, crossing her threshold as though entering a sanctuary. Because they were.

The clientele expanded organically. One pilgrim became three, then a congregation. Business flourished.

Olivia married Javier Saenz at fifteen years old in Comales, a municipality in Camargo, Tamaulipas. In 1994, they relocated to Texas, settling in Rio Grande City, where three children followed: Javier Jr., Leslie, and Lenalie. Her faith wasn't inherited by her paternal grandmother, Maria del Pilar Olivarez, a catechism teacher in Comales who taught Olivia how to pray with conviction and maintain faith through adversity.

Her middle child, Leslie, was diagnosed with cancer in 2011, nine years before the boutique materialized. Hospitals became their second home. Fundraisers for medical necessities punctuated their existence. Olivia absorbed her daughter's anguish as though it originated in her own cells. Yet faith remained her anchor. She elevated it above the relentless devastation.

Thirteen years passed. Leslie celebrated her quinceañera in defiance of prognosis. She graduated high school when statistics suggested otherwise. She pursued college. She established her own business, Canvas on the Go: By Leslie. Cancer attempted to obliterate her trajectory. Leslie reconstructed it, hour by excruciating hour.

During a hospital stay, machines humming their monotonous symphony, Leslie posed a question to her mother. What should she paint while they waited? Olivia's asked her for a portrait of Saint Charbel. The intercessor to whom they had consecrated this unbearable pilgrimage through illness.

Leslie painted the saint. Olivia remains convinced that her daughter possessed some premonition that this canvas would be her final testament. That she was bestowing one last benediction before departure.

Olivia reproduced it, distributing copies to devotees of Saint Charbel throughout the community. Leslie's ultimate creation metamorphosed into a conduit for collective faith.

When Leslie died in 2024, Olivia underwent transmutation. Not into someone consumed by rage or paralyzed by grief, but into someone galvanized. She advocates now for the daughter silenced by death. She testifies. She refuses to permit Leslie's thirteen-year battle to evaporate into anonymous statistics.

Outside her home stands a statue of Saint Charbel. Ribbons in kaleidoscopic hues cascade down his outstretched arms. Blue signifies strength and divine will. Gold represents enlightenment. Pink embodies reconciliation. Green channels hope. Red addresses desperate circumstances. Violet offers mercy. Yellow delivers wisdom. Purple facilitates transformation. White acknowledges answered petitions.

Visitors arrive to attach their ribbons, to articulate their desperation into the South Texas wind. The statue has evolved into something beyond religious iconography. It memorializes Leslie. It honors every struggle that demands witnessing.

The room Olivia once questioned opening has become something she never imagined. Not a store. Not even a boutique. It's where Leslie's final painting hangs on the wall, surrounded by the rosaries her mother's hands continue to create. Where strangers become witnesses to a mother who refused to let cancer have the last word.

Olivia no longer grapples with whether God's things should be sold. She discovered something more profound in those thirteen years of battle and four years of boutique operation. Faith doesn't diminish when it's shared. It multiplies. Every ribbon tied to Saint Charbel outside her door, every copy of Leslie's painting distributed, every handmade rosary that leaves her shelves carries her daughter's defiance forward.

Olivia keeps his statue standing, keeps those ribbons accumulating, keeps her doors open. Not because she's selling devotion, but because she's refusing to let her daughter's courage die with her body.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

Copyright © 2026 Maria Santos Salinas for FRONTeras.

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