God doesn’t need me to save the world.

Really.

God can choose to use others to help someone in need besides me.  Sometimes I forget that.  I see a need and in my overwhelming anxiety to “fix” everybody and everything, I lose track of the fact that I am not always the best one to do the fixing.  I was reminded of that a little over a week ago.

I have been distracted the past few weeks as I have been processing through some appointments to be a kidney donor for a long-time friend.  She is in my church…in my adult Sunday school class actually.  She is one of those people who has selflessly ministered to others (emotionally hurting young women) for years and years.  Someday when she gets to heaven, there is going to be such a long line of people that she has helped that it will take a long time to get through all of the welcome hugs.  She really is that kind of a compassionate, generous, giving person.  If anyone deserves help, she does.

I am an O positive blood type so that makes me a universal donor.  When I heard that my friend needed a kidney, I decided that God must mean for me to donate my universal donor kidney.  In the end, I was wrong.  After meeting with a number of different people from social worker to doctor and giving up quite a few vials of blood, the medical team met.  They discussed me and turned me down due to past “gut issues” and the threat of a bowel blockage if I underwent surgery.

During the surgery, the surgeon actually must move the intestines aside to get to the kidney at the back.  Intestines don’t like to be handled and mine REALLY don’t like to be handled…I know as I have had 3 intestinal surgeries.  I have had pretty glitchy intestines ever since with 2 total blockages that had to be pumped as well as 4 other threatened blockages that ended up resolving, the last of which was this past May.

In retrospect, I understand the medical team turning me down.  I’d actually probably have turned me down too.  I wanted to help fix my friend though.  I wanted to give her the joy of a new lease on life.

In all honesty, I was scared though as well.  Once the kidney doctor said the surgery could bring on another blockage, I understood that the potential kidney donation could have consequences beyond what I initially thought of.

There are two things in life that completely terrify me.  The first is snakes. I am completely phobic and have no intention of ever coming to terms with that.  I have sometimes joked that when my kids were young, I hoped that I would put myself between my child and a threatening poisonous snake but I’m not sure I would have.

The second thing I’m terrified of is another blockage where I have to have a naso-gastric tube up my nose and down into my stomach to pump out the blockage.  The first time it happened, it took about 72 hours to pump me.  The second time it took about 36 hours.  If I had to choose between a third time and death, the NG tube would only slightly look like a better alternative.  It may not be so for everyone, but for me it’s extremely painful, even with painkillers.

So…I was turned down.  I prayed a lot the day I knew the medical team was meeting because I wanted to follow God’s will and I wanted to be brave despite my blockage fear.  In the end, I wasn’t the one.  God has someone else in mind that will be a better donor than me.  He doesn’t need me to save the world, Jesus already did.  Sometime in the future though, God may choose to use me to touch someone and I need to be ready to say yes…even if it’s uncomfortable, even if I’m scared.

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it.”

Nelson Mandela