We Need More Women Like This

Have you ever had a time when something you’ve puzzled about just clicked into place?

I had this happen on New Year’s Eve at a memorial service for my favorite Sunday School teacher. Now, I had a lot of Sunday School teachers. My family went to church every Sunday: Sunday School and church (that’s what we called the worship service) so there was a lot of competition for the favorite. This teacher was my favorite not because she was the wittiest, although she was witty, or the prettiest, although she was pretty, or the coolest (no, Mrs. Kallina could not be described as cool). Mrs. Kallina had a characteristic that was far above all of those traits. Mrs. Kallina cared.

I was a freshman in high school when I was in her class. I came from a very dysfunctional family. One of our symptoms was that we kept secrets. I can still hear my mom say things like “Don’t let the neighbors see you do that” or “If the neighbors knew you did that, what would they think”. Now I suppose that we did have some neighbors who were interested in what we did, but mostly I think it was my mom’s own fear of not being good enough or not being accepted that caused her to say things like that. So as a 14 or 15-year-old kid, I had a lot of fears and kept a lot of secrets, because I thought that if people knew fill-in-the-blank then they wouldn’t like me or approve of me or whatever the imagined consequences might be of their finding out.

This was the girl who sat in Mrs. Kalina’s classroom and admired her and hung on her every word and wanted to be like her in every way. Now that I’m all grown up and have a lot of experience under my belt, I am sure she knew what was going on with me. Mrs. Kallina knew my mom and dad.  She was a wise woman and was particularly plugged in with God. But she never said anything to me about any of this until the next year when I was a sophomore.

Even though I was no longer in her class she sensed something was wrong. And something was wrong. I was having trouble figuring out about boys and dating and how to go about all of that in a healthy way. One day she called me and asked me to come over to her house. I did and we sat in her living room. I didn’t understand it at the time, but she was reaching out to me. However, all that echoed in my head was “What would the neighbors think?” or, in this case, “What would Mrs. Kallina think?”. So I didn’t open up: “Everything was fine, no problems at all”. She gave me a little book called God’s Will and Your Life. I admired her so. I was embarrassed that I wasn’t doing life right. I didn’t want her to know. And I didn’t want God to know either. Of course the reasonable thing to do was ignore the book.

At her service, those chosen to eulogize her spoke of her prayers and what an integral part of her life praying was. I realized then that she had been praying for me when I was a young teenager. I knew deep in my heart that was how she knew something was going on with me, something I needed help with. And I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, open up. How different my life might have been if I had talked to her! And then God reminded me that without her prayers how much worse my life would have been. How many more mistakes might I have made if she had not been praying for me? Her prayers protected me.

One of the eulogizers said “We need more women like Mrs. Kallina”. Yes, we do. More women who pray, who care, who reach out. More women who change and protect lives by quietly praying and reaching out to those they pray for, acting on the promptings they experience in prayer.

With the help of Mrs. Kallina’s prayers, I managed to struggle through my problems and grow up. I married the man I have been married to for 43 years. I began teaching teenagers in Sunday School just like Mrs. Kallina. When I was a young adult, I had an opportunity to tell Mrs. Kallina that she was my favorite Sunday School teacher and that I was trying to be just like her. She smiled her lovely smile and shook her head. I had embarrassed her. I didn’t know then what she had done for me simply by praying for me at my most confused time. What I owe her will not be known this side of heaven. I have a feeling that when I tell her when I see her in heaven, she’ll just smile her lovely smile and point to God who, of course, is the one who worked in her and in me to bring about his purposes.

Yes, we need more women like Mrs. Kallina. Women who will pray for children who are the least, or lost, or lonely. Thank you, Mrs. Kallina, for all you did for me.