A Daughter's Love for Her Mother: A Kidney Transplant Story

I just want to appreciate my sister who donated her kidney to our mother who has end-stage renal disease. God has a plan but we never saw it.

When there was too little option for a donor for our mother, we started looking for relatives. Although it may have higher chances of familial disease, we had to take the chance. Now there were only a handful of our relatives who were willing to donate their kidneys. You can count them on one hand. However, all of them failed the matching test. Then we started looking to those people beside us. We candidly asked ourselves, would anybody from the family would like to donate a kidney to mom?

How much does a child love one's parent when the child is not willing to donate a kidney? Would donating a kidney a test of a child's love to one's parent? Maybe not. But how much then does the child love the parent?

A child choosing not to donate a kidney to one's parent is not a measure of a child's love to the parent. But donating a kidney to one's parent speaks a thousand words.

People ask, why would a daughter donate her kidney to her mother?

She never answered it. She just did. Even the ethics committee never bothered to ask the question because they saw the answers in her eyes.

My sister is a social worker. She once explained to me why she loves doing good deeds. I always thought she would do good deeds because as Christians that is expected of us. I never understood what she meant when she explained that most people would imitate a movie star idol or an athlete. She was doing good to imitate Christ. Jesus sacrificed his body, his career, his future and eventually his life for other people's sake. I never thought my sister would go that far imitating Christ.

When it was time to have the transplant, every body was anxious. What will happen? Will it be successful? What if something goes wrong? What if the kidney was rejected by the body?

It was a test of faith. It was a simple pure surrender to God's plan. It helped that we are a God fearing family. It is cliché that "a family that prays together, stays together."

More than that, there were people, relatives, church family and friends who showed support. It was an outpouring of God's love through the people around us.

Then the time has come. The nurses and the doctor came to the room. There was silence. As the nurses prepared my sister, she was calm. Everything was set, then they started rolling her bed out of the room. There was one last thing that needs to be done. The family gathered around her... and Auntie Bing, who is a clergy, thanked God for a daughter's courageous act... The doctor assured her, the single kidney she will donate is healthy enough to support her mother. My brother squeezed my sister's hand and said, "it is all part of God's plan"... tears fell.