A Parable of Grace

By Rev. Jody DeFehr, Hospital Chaplain

It’s a sunny, autumn day. The light of the morning sun is shining through the windows of an intensive care unit into patient rooms filled with IV stands and ventilators and heart monitors. It also falls onto the faces of nurses and doctors and techs as they hover over patients to check vital signs, administer medications and offer hope. In one room, the light reveals the jaundiced face of a 45-year-old teacher who is dying of liver failure and next door, the ashen face of a 62- year-old grandfather who needs a new heart. Three doors down, the light falls on the face of a 27-year-old mother gasping for breath with ruined lungs.

None of them has walked in the light for weeks. On good days, they might be able to sit in a chair next to the bed or maybe even walk around the ICU with the help of a trained therapist. Most of the time, they are too weak to get out of bed.  They are doing all they can to live another day. There is reason to hope and believe that they can be well again. Their task is to stay as well as possible, as long as possible and to wait. They have to hold on, but there is no way of knowing for how long. They also know that they will all die if they have to wait too long.

They are waiting for a gift. It is a priceless gift. It is priceless not only because of what it will give them - new life and health and time with their families – but also because of what it costs – the life of someone else. Of course they know that no one is going to die to donate their organs but, still, how do you pray for a new heart when you know that it comes from someone else’s death? How do you hope for a liver or lungs when you know that someone else’s family is going to experience the grief that yours hopes to delay? How can you feel worthy of such a gift?

In another hospital, a family grieves. Someone they love has died and the autumn sunlight is swallowed in darkness. They are exhausted from hoping and praying that their loved one would live and now they are filled with the shadows of sorrow.

Someone tells them of the possibility of donating their loved one’s organs, and they begin to talk about the hope that something good might come from something so sad. They talk about how it would be just like their loved one to want to help someone else. They talk about how they would like to spare some other family the pain that they themselves are experiencing at the death of someone they love. They talk about how someone else can live because someone they love has died. So they choose to give a priceless gift to nameless strangers and a 45-year-old teacher receives a liver, and a 62-year-old grandfather receives a heart, and a 27-year-old mother receives new lungs and they all pray for a grieving family they may never know.

As a hospital chaplain, I have been with all of these people more times than I can count. Transplantation isn’t a rare or experimental procedure anymore, but it is still a miracle every time it happens. Obviously, it is a miracle of new life for those who were dying, but I believe that it is also a miracle for those who give. Most of those who donate are doing so in the midst of profound sorrow and pain, and yet, they are still able to think of the needs of others and to give when all they feel is loss. What a profound and wonderful miracle. What a parable of grace.

There are more than 450 people waiting for transplants in Nebraska…