Melina and I are about the same age- a couple months apart. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, she is really tall, and I am pretty short(at least I feel like that when she's looking down at me). We both have two girls and one boy. We both have one husband, good ones: But there is something special about Melina- I saw it, or rather with the eyes of the soul did I see it. For some reason, she reminds me of the woman in C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, whom we meet when the bus from Hell arrives with the woman's husband who has come to find her. She meets him, she who was a normal woman in life with a house-apron and raw hands from the lye in wash-soap, a joyful woman who fed those who came to her door with food and love. She meets him, garlanded as a queen and followed by her court: all those whom she helped- men, women, children, cats and birds and dogs (the latter yelping and bounding eagerly around her flowing skirts).
I met Melina that day we came to St. Mary's, a little lost and lonely because we'd just moved to Melina's town- she pulled us right into a community of people; and when I hung around the tutorial she was helping run, we just fell into easy chatter. But Melina is no easy come, easy go friend. She kept me and my family at a distance, a distance respectful of the fact that she did not know us. As she experienced us, she prudently became more open: I understood this as the really loving thing to do, in that there was no falsity in her- this was a Woman of Prudence.
Then we graduated to talking on the phone about this or that(we were working together on a girls' group) and I noticed that she would always, consistently, draw the problems to prayer: "Let's go and pray about that and then get together and decide"; or, with something really important or hard, "Let me go to confession and Mass and then I can make a good decision".
I also noticed that she has a very counter-cultural attitude about her husband. She talked to me matter-of-factly and in a strong, femine way about submission: "I need to make sure that I am home for my husband, especially when he's been traveling"; or, " I have to check with my husband and see if he'll allow this". Now, often, I wonder about my slightly different take on the whole marriage relationship - because I respect her greatly; but nevertheless, I deeply respect Melina's desire to be submissive, as Christ is submissive, showing in this attitude a love of humility and servanthood. The actual, practical way this is carried out in any marriage is a complicated and private matter, dealing with the spouses strengths and weaknesses, intermingled essentially with the spiritual growth of each person. It is no easy matter to make principles in this area- so I don't, beyond an imitation of Melina's strategy: Take each thing to God in prayer.
In her habitual recourse to prayer in even the humblest matters, Melina reminds me of a child in the lap of God. This doesn't mean she is a spiritual simpleton, but rather someone who has the strength and balance of heart to know that she cannot rely on herself, but would choose, rather, to rely on God: because she knows her strength is not equal to sainthood. I've no doubt that she would be able to be a very successful and prudent person on the purely natural level, and so it is all the more amazing to see a gifted, balanced person like herself choose to take even the smallest things to God. There is a key to understanding this in her life, and it is a person: her son, James.
Melina has suffered because James has autism, and as hard as that is (hard beyond measure), somehow I think that God knew that this would help make her the tower of faith that she is; and she has no fear of others who may think (I have never heard this said, or anything negative about Melina) that she is 'all about God'- I think she would laugh her strong and deep laugh and say, "absolutely".
We have a group of homeschooling moms here, and someone coined the phrase, "Melina Novena", expressing both a little humor, but primarily a little awe and respect for this joyful and normal person, who is inside a passionate and unusual lover of Christ. She does not talk about herself in an inordinate way, and she takes criticism more humbly and better than anyone I have ever met. So it isn't that she doesn't have faults, but I somehow see that because her life is centered in Christ- He seems to be the measure by which she sees everything in her life- that she will, in the end, be perfect. This is my hope for my friend- and myself- and all of us.
