Most Important Thing I’ve Learned – So Far

This experience of choosing to give a body organ to someone else has led to a lot of unusual thoughts.  Part of why I wanted to start this blog is to share some of the things I’ve learned about myself, about other people and about God.

Very recently, I have shifted in my thoughts to thinking beyond myself.  Much of my thoughts about kidney donation were highly focused on how it would affect me.  As we have moved closer to surgery and I have become more and more confident about the Lord’s leading in this situation, I find myself marveling at how God works!  I am utterly amazed at how He changed my heart!  I was never asked by Katherine to consider donating a kidney.  It was never even suggested by anyone.  In fact, when I first began looking into being a living donor, I was quite surprised that other people didn’t feel the same way I did.  I had a strong burden that I had to do something!  At the time, I didn’t realize that was unique to me.  Sometimes I can be a slow learner.

So now months later, I look back and marvel at what God did in my heart.  I think it was about halfway through the process and Katherine asked me, “So how exactly did all this happen?”  She didn’t know how in the world I was even a potential candidate in her case.  Katherine and I were not friends.  Actually, we knew each other, we knew each other’s husbands, but it pretty much ended there.  So when you are talking about an acquaintance, what causes a person to choose to give up a functioning part of their body to an acquaintance?

I cannot answer for others, but I can say in my case it was God who put a strong burden in my heart.  So as I look back and reflect, I am so encouraged in my faith because if God can do that in my heart, He can do all sorts of things in the hearts of many others who we pray for on a regular basis!  He changed my heart to willingly offer something of incredible value to someone I didn’t know well – He can change hard hearts and cause them to seek Him and seek truth!  Wow!

Ezekiel 36:26 “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit will I put in you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

I alone know how God completely changed my heart, and it causes me to humbly fall on my knees before Him.  If you remove that factor, it is completely crazy what I am doing.  Over the past few months, I have learned to trust God in a new way…a way that requires constant fellowship and intimacy with a holy, all-powerful, almighty God. What a privilege!