Receiving the Gift

Like my Christmas post, “The Gift,” this reflection grew out of thinking about what it means to give and what it means to receive.

I find joy in giving. Giving feels natural. Giving feels light. Giving lets me watch a smile widen on another person’s face, and that is enough for me.

Years ago, before my kidney function started failing, I knew if someone needed my kidney, I would have said “yes” without hesitation. The irony is that no one would have gotten mine, as it wouldn’t have qualified for transplant. But asking someone else to give theirs felt impossible. My throat tightened every time I tried to imagine the words. The question rose, but it never reached my lips. It stayed lodged somewhere between fear and humility. A place where the truth finally stopped long enough for me to see it. I would gladly go through every test to see if I could give, yet I could not imagine asking someone else to do the same for me.

But kidneys ignore love languages. The order of your languages doesn’t sway them. They follow need. The weight of that truth pressed against every doubt I carried. It stirred questions I didn’t want to face.

“Who am I to ask someone to give a part of their body so I can get away from dialysis and have a better, healthier life? Who am I to step into conversations that make people shift in their seats because they do not know what to say? Who am I to receive a gift that feels touched by something larger than both of us?”

October 22^nd, 2025, a gift arrived that I could neither earn, repay, nor express my gratitude with mere words. A gift that asked nothing of me except to receive it. A gift from someone I have never met, someone who said “yes” to a question I could barely ask without words cracking. A gift that was, in every way, shaped for me at the time I needed it most.

Sidney (my kidney) had been shaped for this body, for this chapter, for me.

Not only in the way grace can feel shaped for a person, but in the way an actual organ carries its own weight. The firmness, the smooth surface, the way it settles into the space it was made to fill. All of it felt like its own evidence that gifts do not always arrive as a “maybe one day” thought. Sometimes a gift becomes something you can hold, something a surgeon can lift with both hands, something that settles into the body and begins its work. This gift began with a signature and found its way into a sterile operating room. Grace may have its own shape, a love language all its own, but here it was, living inside mine.

The body knows when it has been given something it cannot repay. It knows the weight of mercy when it arrives unearned, settling deeper than breath. In that weight, lives a kind of holiness in letting yourself be held by hands you cannot see. I recognized that same surrender the first time I eased myself onto the hospital bed, the paper crinkling beneath me as I tried to steady my weight. My legs wavered, searching for steadiness they couldn’t find alone. The room held its breath around me.

Grace keeps arriving in ways I never expected, wrapped in a gift I once believed I did not deserve. Accepting it is becoming its own kind of practice, a slow opening of the hands and the heart. Some days, I step into that truth with confidence. Other days, I inch toward it with caution.

Worthiness is taking root in places that once felt hollow.

Gratitude rises with it, steady and honest, meeting me every morning I wake with Sidney working inside me. Beneath that gratitude lives a steady longing for the day I meet the one who said “yes.”

Related Post:
Thinking about my Kidney Donor