How to Save a Life

Over the past two weeks I've had to face the reality of death. One of the Greek professors at Dallas seminary died unexpectedly and a guy that I knew growing up died of cancer. On the flip side, a woman from my church who was diagnosed with Severe Aplastic Anemia recently found a bone marrow donor. As I read accounts of and talked to people who are intimately connected with these events I have felt the weight of death and the brevity and volatility of life. I commented to my wife that Jodie and Alex were probably like us a year ago: trying to get the daily things done, enjoying time with family, etc. But in the space of a few months, their lives were tossed all around. It makes me wonder what kinds of things are in store for me, how different life will be in the coming months, weeks, or even days. You just can't plan for stuff like Severe Aplastic Anemia. Or throat cancer. Or death. The campaign behind finding Jodie's donor was amazing. Our church did a bone marrow drive. There's a ton of bone marrow drives going on now. Jodie's sister put a ton of energy into mobilizing people and spreading the word. She used everything at her disposal. I got multiple requests from her to forward a request that people get registered for bone marrow donation to everyone I know. That's a lot of people. And even though I wasn't comfortable to forward it to everyone I knew, I really admired and appreciated the lengths that Jodie's sister went to help be part of the plan to save her sister. I would have done the same. So I asked Jodie's sister if she would mind that I post her email to my blog because, I reasoned, people come here to read something rather than having something pushed to them that they may or may not want. But we got the news this past week that she found a donor. I encourage you to go to their site: savejodie.com. It's not as dramatic as the email but I think it communicates the same information. One of the striking things about this campaign was the fact that a match would most likely come from someone like Jodie; someone who was ethnically Asian. It didn't surprise me, though, to learn that there were very few Asians on the donor list; if it doesn't help you make money or get good grades why do it? Haha. I think that a lot of that has to do with culture. Chinese culture is very tied to taking care of your own. So you would take care of your own family, but taking care of a stranger is not a value intrinsic to Chinese culture. There are other concerns of course; Felicity and I talked about how, if we were matches, that might affect our timeline in planning to move to China. In the end, though, both of us agreed that this was an opportunity for us to help save someone else (Jodie or otherwise). That was what made this campaign compelling. In the Christian faith we talk about imitating Christ and following His example. Bone marrow donation (or any type of bodily donation) is but a shadow of the redemptive, life-giving, life-changing of Christ. Where he gave his body for us, here was an opportunity for us to give our body for others. I am thankful for this small opportunity to possibly be part of something so significant in my own and someone else's life.