I had always heard about the importance of knowing the faith, of having faith, of keeping the faith. Isn’t that what grandmothers used to say when things weren’t going so well? At least mine did. My grandmother’s name was Juana, but she could easily have been called Faith.During the first years of my life — those years when, they say, one’s personality is formed — my grandmother taught me to pray, to love the Blessed Virgin, and to believe firmly in God. Then my grandmother passed away, and my faith went away with her. It may sound like a cheap excuse, but it’s one of my weaknesses: I’m good at making excuses.As the years went by, my life became disordered — in the worst sense of the word. I was that kind of teenager no one wants at home: rebellious, living too “happily,” again in the worst sense of the word. So much disorder and poorly managed “joy” led me to conceive a child at the worst possible time, speaking of timing. When I became pregnant, I was working in hospitality, drinking away my wages, and not even sure who the father of that child might be. The peak of the “good life.” I was twenty-four years old.And yet, Alice came and changed everything. She gave me a reason to move forward and to start putting my life in order. She was a chubby, healthy, cheerful baby — but cheerful in the best sense of the word. And good, so good, so perfect, as only miracles are. I didn’t realize it then, but Alice wasn’t born with a loaf of bread under her arm — she was born with a piece of my faith under her arm.The years passed, and I chose a school for her — a school that is now like family. To afford it, I decided to seek help from my parents — the same parents who, during my teenage years, might well have come to hate me. I started a degree, and to this day, I’ve finished it.I chose the school for its facilities, its academic standards, and its values — a Christian school, though that was, I told myself, the least important part. But the school also came with a little faith under its arm.Alice was born with a heart murmur — nothing serious; she could live a normal life, the doctors kept telling me. But at her five-year checkup, her cardiologist told us she needed surgery. My world collapsed. Nothing made sense. The doctor said “a simple operation,” but all I could hear was “heart.”There’s no way to live without a heart — that’s all I could think: Life is going to take from me the only thing I have, my daughter, and I won’t know how to live without her. I don’t care about anything else. If she goes, I go with her.That same afternoon, by chance, one of the school moms called to invite me to spend a weekend in Torreciudad, to take part in the Marian Family Day. And I clung to that faith my daughter and her school had brought under their arm; I needed it. I was weak, broken, afraid. I couldn’t do it alone.We went to Torreciudad on a Friday, and my daughter’s operation was on Monday. Another coincidence. When I entered the sanctuary, everything seemed spectacular — it’s such a beautiful place that anyone, with or without faith, can admire it. But when I went in to see the Virgin, I knelt, and I cried, and I prayed.During Alice’s school years, I had prayed before, attended parent meetings, joined in the prayers — but that was, without a doubt, the first time in my life I prayed with desperation, asking the Virgin for something so immense: to protect my daughter, to let her stay with me.On Monday, my daughter was operated on. It was quick and perfect. It was the hardest hour of my life, and I turned to Our Lady of Torreciudad again and again — like someone calling their friend at three in the morning, desperate.My Mother, our Mother. She didn’t look at me like an old friend — she knew me through and through, and she cared for me as much as, or even more than, I cared for my daughter. An hour later, Alice was out of surgery — drowsy, but awake, and her heart was working.

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