c. 1998 Religion News Service

LYNDHURST, Ohio _ The first two times Diana Harrill felt God had spoken to her, the voice was soft but persistent and asked her if she would help a church member suffering from kidney failure.”Of course I would,”Harrill replied. So she prayed that Toni Whatley would wake up one morning miraculously healed.

But the third time Harrill believes God spoke to her she sensed that this was more of a joint venture: She understood God wanted her to donate one of her own kidneys to a woman who was barely more than an acquaintance.

So began the spiritual journey of two remarkable women _ Harrill, a 47-year-old raised in a white suburb, and Whatley, a 46-year-old black woman who had overcome the racial hatred of school integration in Cleveland to find the faith to accept an extraordinary gift from a white person.

Harrill and Whatley have decided to share their story in the hope that the operation that took place in May will be an inspiration to others.

In a medical world where the gift of a kidney from an unrelated living donor is almost unheard of _ and doctors and nurses have become hardened to the more common cases of relatives and spouses refusing to be even tested _ it’s been an”oh wow”moment, said Bernadette Koshla, a transplant nurse at University Hospitals of Cleveland until her retirement in August.”It was remarkable that this donor was so sure and so joyful in doing it and having such a deep feeling that this was the right thing to be done,”Koshla said.

In Whatley’s family, her mother and one sister were ruled out as potential donors because of medical conditions. Another sister was not compatible, and a brother and her husband, Tom, were never tested. Whatley’s name was on the transplant waiting list, and she was notified four times that a kidney might be available, but each time the match fell through.

At the First Assembly of God Church in Lyndhurst, which sent church members to fill University Hospitals’ waiting room with prayer vigils for Harrill and Whatley, what’s transpired is nothing short of a miracle.”When I think of a miracle, I think of Toni waking up one morning and being completely healed,”said the Rev. Daniel M. Wood, pastor of the suburban Cleveland church.”But the miracles here seemed to be more in tune with what God was doing in Diana and Toni.” For the two women, it is a love story.”It is a love story of God’s love for us, and our love for each other”‘ Harrill said.”To me, it’s a love story all the way through.” Growing up in Cleveland Heights and later Mayfield, Ohio, Harrill’s primary contact with blacks was through the bond she formed with her family’s housekeeper.”Bessie was always there,”Harrill recalled.”She was so full of love, almost like a second mother figure to me.” Harrill joined First Assembly in 1977. As the church attracted more black members, some whites left, but”I thought it was great,”Harrill said.

Early last year, Whatley was just an acquaintance in Harrill’s Sunday school class. What brought the two together was Whatley’s decision to share her pain of undergoing dialysis three days a week, a regimen that barely left her enough strength for anything other than work as a telephone operator at Cleveland Clinic and attending church.

For 40 days in the spring of 1997, Harrill joined with others in a liquid fast and sustained prayer for Whatley to be healed of her kidney disease.

When Whatley was not healed, Harrill said she began to hear the voice of God urging her to do more. When she understood God calling her to be a kidney donor, she did not even know if such a transplant was possible between people of different races.

She did some research and discovered the kidney is a colorblind organ. Slowly, with Whatley’s hesitant permission, she began undergoing tests to see if she could be a donor.

As blood test after blood test came back positive, Harrill’s decision was confirmed. The worries of her husband and son, Ivan and Matthew Harrill, MDUL about the dangers of the operation did not weaken her resolve.”There’s no way, if I felt the Lord leading me to do something, that I would allow anybody to stop me from doing it,”Harrill said.

Dr. James Schulak, director of transplantation at University Hospitals, remembered Harrill’s never-weakening commitment as he explained the potential dangers, from the very slight possibility of fatal complications to more possible outcomes that the kidney would be rejected or that Harrill one day would not be able to help a member of her own family who developed kidney failure.”Probably the thing that impressed me the most was the donor’s resolution to go forward,”Schulak said.

At a church retreat last fall, Harrill reassured Whatley that she was prepared for any outcome.”I’m not afraid of dying,”she said.”I felt I would be in heaven anyway, and that’s got to be a whole lot better place than here. I felt I was in a win-win situation.” Today, the two women are close friends.”She’s such a beautiful person. I just delight when I see her,”Harrill said.”I know God has a sense of humor in how he put Diana and I together,”added the cherubic-faced Whatley, whose peaceful countenance contrasts with the thin, intense Harrill.

While Harrill was growing up in Mayfield, Whatley remembers that as a 7- and 8-year-old, she and other gifted minority children were assigned to a school where at times they would literally have to run for their lives from adults whose faces were filled with hatred at having black children in their community.

When Whatley chose First Assembly in 1981, it was in part an intentional statement that segregation may be unavoidable in other parts of her life, but it had no place in church.

However, in a problem common in churches where personal suffering is sometimes associated with spiritual weakness, she found it difficult to share her battle with kidney failure. For almost five years, she had received dialysis three times a week. The treatments would last three to 3 1/2 hours each time and leave her exhausted _ and sometimes unable to sleep at night.”With me being a Christian, I just believed God was going to heal me. So I never really believed I was going to be on dialysis for the rest of my life,”she said.

But it was not until Whatley found the strength to discuss her condition before her Sunday school class that her life would change.

When Harrill approached her about being a kidney donor, Whatley said,”I was very pleasantly surprised and speechless all at the same time.” Still, after the first four donations fell through, Whatley did not want to get her hopes up too soon. It was not until Harrill assured her that this was her calling from God that Whatley felt comfortable with the organ donation. “If this is the will of God, then he’s going to work everything out,”Whatley decided.

After nearly five years of a life pretty much divided between work and dialysis, she remembers coming home from the hospital and enjoying a Wednesday afternoon.”That would have been the time I would have been going on dialysis, and here I was sitting on the porch enjoying a beautiful afternoon,”she said.”Things that people take for granted, I’m still discovering the beauty of it all.” Whatley realizes that even with the anti-rejection medication she must take there is still the risk that her body may eventually reject the organ. But she said the last six months have been some of the best of her life, and well worth the risk.”It has not only been a blessing for me as far as how my life has changed, it’s been a special blessing experiencing the love of Christ to that magnitude,”she said.”I, from this experience, learned how to receive graciously, with open arms, and it’s been a wonderful gift.”

IR END BRIGGS