"If Christ could give his life for me, I could give a part of my body back," he said. "There wasn't much more to it."

Taylor, a 27-year-old high-school teacher from North Carolina, had surgery Oct. 21 in Jacksonville, Fla. His left kidney was removed and transplanted into Tammy Patterson, a 33-year-old mother of two with a rare disease destroying her kidneys.

It was Patterson's second kidney transplant. The first -- from her brother in 1991 -- lasted until this summer, when recurring infections sent her back into dialysis treatments.

During that first surgery, Taylor's family -- particularly his mother, Maggie -- helped care for Patterson. Both families were at that time members of Galatia Church, a rural congregation in Northampton County. Patterson's husband, Hugh, was the church's minister of music and youth.

"We couldn't have made it through the first surgery without this family," Hugh Patterson said of the Taylors.

"We take care of our people," Maggie Taylor said resolutely.

At the time, Nat Taylor was a member of Galatia's youth and college group. Although a student at Campbell University, Taylor became close friends with the Pattersons, who shared Sunday dinner with the Taylors almost every week.

The families remained close even after the Pattersons moved to a South Carolina church in 1994 and later to Jacksonville, Fla., Hugh Patterson's hometown, where he now works for a mortgage company.

Then word came this summer that Tammy Patterson would need another transplant.

Taylor remembered he is the same blood type as Patterson -- O-positive. Although he had never had surgery before, and is fearful of needles, Taylor immediately went to be tested as a possible donor. The battery of tests showed that Taylor's kidney was compatible.

"God called my bluff," he joked.

In fact, O-positive is the most common blood type. But that fact actually made it less likely a donated kidney would come through the traditional transplant waiting list, which currently has 37,000 names. "There were so many people with that blood type, I would have had to wait for a long time," she said.

A likely source for most transplant patients is family members, but none of Patterson's family members qualified medically.

In addition to blood type, possible donors are screened for blood-cell type and tissue type -- factors which determine the likelihood that a patient will accept a transplanted organ. Those two factors traditionally eliminate most donor candidates. But the development, particularly in the last three years, of new immunosuppressant drugs, which reduce the body's impulse to reject transplanted organs, has "expanded the horizons" of organ donation, said Thomas Peters, one of two doctors who performed the transplant.

"It isn't unusual any longer to have living, unrelated donors," Peters said.

Nat Taylor may never have known he qualified as a donor if he had not been in charge of a blood drive two years ago at the high school where he teaches history and coaches baseball. When the drive came up one pint short of its goal, he suppressed his fear of needles long enough to donate for the first time. That's when he learned his blood type.

"If you hadn't been one pint short, you wouldn't be here today," Hugh Patterson reminded Taylor one day before the transplant. An hour earlier, Taylor had almost fainted when technicians drew his blood for a final cross-check, the last step before giving the operation the OK.

Patterson's kidney problems were first diagnosed in 1989, about the time she and Hugh moved to Galatia Church. A rare disorder called IgA nephropathy would eventually require a transplant, she was told, but not soon. When she learned she could not have children without a new kidney, however, she and Hugh decided to seek a transplant sooner.

"We both knew God had children intended for our lives," said Patterson, a native of Spruce Pine. While in the hospital for a round of tests two months before the scheduled surgery, she suddenly went into kidney failure. The transplant was performed a week later, in December 1991.

The operation was a success. Twenty months later, the Pattersons' first son, Robert, was born. Bradley followed 18 months later.

But the disease that destroyed the first two kidneys eventually claimed the third. This summer Patterson's kidney function was weak enough to require dialysis, a three-hour procedure in which a machine performs the kidneys' function of filtering impurities from the blood.

"The first time I had dialysis, I decided I would rather die than do that the rest of my life," she recalled.

She began regular dialysis. It did not go well. Several different methods were tried, but none proved consistently successful. Her condition worsened. A series of infections sent her in and out of the hospital.

"I almost died in July," she said matter-of-factly. "I had pretty much accepted it." The Pattersons wrestled with tough choices. They were tired of fighting a losing battle with dialysis. Finding a donor could take months or longer. Stopping dialysis would bring death within two weeks. They worried about the boys, now 4 and 2.

"You don't want to know what I was thinking," Hugh Patterson said. Exhausted and discouraged, he fought to remain positive for his wife¼s sake. But inside, he said, he had given up.

"I was ready for her to die. Then I could start over."

After several weeks of unsuccessful dialysis, and with no prospect of a transplant in sight, the couple made preparations to admit Tammy Patterson to a hospice.

They decided to give dialysis one more try. If it didn't work, they agreed, she immediately would check into the hospice to await death.

At Galatia Church and Hendricks Avenue Church, their new congregation in Jacksonville, church members prayed earnestly. Hugh Patterson's fellow choir members huddled with him in prayer while Tammy Patterson lingered in the hospital.

During the agonizing weekend before the Monday dialysis, alone in her hospital room, Patterson had what she describes as a "near-death experience."

"I saw a light. And I wanted to go to the light. That's where I wanted to be. But I just couldn't get there. ... I know the light was the Lord, and he was telling me it wasn't my time yet. If you ever see it, you'll know it. It's life-changing."

As a result of that experience, Patterson said, a peace came over her. She was no longer afraid of what might happen, she said. It also has given her new purpose in life, she said.

Relationships now matter most to her, more than material things or a long life.

"That was the point in my life when I said, 'Take my life, Lord.' I had said that before, but this time I really meant it. I hope he will take my life and use it to touch somebody. That's what this is all about." That Monday, on the last-chance visit to the dialysis clinic, something changed. Dialysis worked. She began a turnaround.

Suddenly the prospect of a transplant seemed brighter. But before doctors would perform the surgery, she would have to remain on dialysis and clear of infection for three months -- longer than she had stayed healthy in years. Anxiously, they waited. In October, the doctors gave the go-ahead for the transplant.

Patterson has been warned the disease may also destroy her new kidney. But that is a chance she and the doctors are willing to take.

"Her risk of having a recurrence of the disease is certainly more than the average patient, but I don't think it's absolute," said Peters, lead surgeon for the transplant and the one who performed Taylor's surgery. After consulting with several colleagues, he said, he decided the surgery was worth the risk. "She did well with a transplant before," he said.

After back-to-back operations of more two hours each, Peters and surgical colleague Kenneth Jones emerged to report both surgeries had been successful and the transplanted kidney was already working. Forty-eight hours later, Tammy Patterson walked from Room 608, where she was recovering, down the hospital hallway to Room 616 to visit Taylor.

"When Tammy first came in, I felt awesome," Taylor said. "I thought, 'There goes my kidney.'" The transplant was tougher on Taylor than on Patterson. But two days afterward both were doing well. "It hasn't really hit me that I'm missing something," Taylor said smiling. "It's been a neat experience ã most of it."

After emerging from her brush with death to face a future that is less than certain, Patterson admits she has wondered if her fight for a longer life is worth all the effort.

"I have thought about that a lot," she said while packing to leave the hospital. "I truly feel God has a purpose for all of it. I could say it's because of Hugh and my love for him, or my love for the boys, or the love being shown to me. How many people can say they have friends who will lay down their lives for them? But I really feel God has a purpose for me."

Two days after the operation, Patterson was dismissed from the hospital. The next day, she took her two sons to a fall carnival at church.

She cherishes the time she spends with her sons, who have never known their mother when she wasn't fighting that disease with the unpronounceable name. "I guess I miss them most when I'm in the hospital," she said.

But she doesn't speak of the regrets of lost time.

Instead, she sees in her sons the evidence of God's hand on her life.

"When I look at them, they remind me of the miracles. They are the miracles."