A LIFE SAVING PRAYER CHAIN

A LIFE SAVING PRAYER CHAIN


There are times when watching the national news triggers memories and bring a personal event back to the forefront of my mind.   This is one of those stories......about organ donations and how crucial they are. 

Back in March 2010 my mother received a call from a neighbor Betty, whom she knew as an acquaintance but not really a close friend.  Betty had been on kidney dialysis for a long time.   She was in need of a kidney desperately or she would not live.   It was that simple.  A kidney or she would die.   She knew from my mother that I was actively involved in prayer at my church and via the internet and asked her to ask me if  I might reach out through my church and through emails searching for a kidney donor.    I felt blessed to be given the opportunity to do this, and one of the people in my prayer chain has a prayer chain of his own that reaches all over the country.....it is nation wide and goes out each morning five days a week and in emergencies on weekends.   This was the start of a chain of events that glorifies our awesome God!!     Once again He was going to connect those who needed to be connected.

Just days after his prayer request went out a young lady in Delaware responded.    Everything was to take place at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and Beth drove down there several times.    The matching process began...multitudes of tests that normally take months or close to a year to complete.    This young woman was a missionary and had plans  to return to the mission field in Africa at the end of the year, therefore they needed to speed up the process once the initial tests proved to be a match.  It is very rare that someone outside the family will be a match!

The hospital also wanted her to have twelve weeks of recovery time after the surgery.   The surgery was scheduled for late September.   A week or two before the surgery she went hiking and was bitten by a tick.   They then had to postpone the surgery while they ran more blood tests to make sure there were no unexpected complications from the tick bite.   Once they determined that they were cleared to proceed  the surgery was rescheduled for October.   With that delay of the surgery there was a critical and very small window of time for the procedure to take place while allowing  for the recovery time afterward.

Here is an  interesting twist to this story..........when kidney transplant surgeries are planned, the hospital often arranges for pairs of donors and recipients to be prepped for surgery at the same time, a kidney chain, so to speak.    In this case there were two pairs ready and waiting...two donors and two recipients.   This young missionary's kidney did not go to Betty, but to the other recipient who was in need.   In Beth's words,   "Just another cool aspect to the story; while I was in the hospital recovering, there was a guy there named Sean who was also somehow part of our kidney chain. Since I wasn't a match for Betty, we did a paired donor exchange. So I think Betty actually got his kidney, and mine went to the person he was donating on behalf of."

Beth was able to recover in time for her mission trip  and so ended the series of events that started with an email prayer request.....or so I thought.    Last Friday I woke up with the decision to write about this chain of events but knew there were some important details I was not able to recall.   I had not heard from Beth in many months as she did send a periodic update from the mission field.     To my surprise,  I got an email from her that very same morning!!!!     Beth was able to pull together the details of the entire process from start to finish with approximate dates which is how I able to quote the information that she supplied.      God does work in mysterious ways and He always provides what we need......and so often His timing benefits our timing!   How awesome to know I have such a God I can always count on.....from the smallest of details in my life to the enormous moving of mountains......