THE Order of St John launched its Award for Organ Donation at St James's Palace last month. This is a new way for the country to thank anyone who has had some part to play in saving lives in this way: people who think beyond themselves, and say "Yes."

Among the first recipients were some who had selflessly given an organ to a loved one, and the relatives of people whose organs had been given to anonymous strangers after their death. I was there as the parent of one such donor.

To someone with heart, kidney, or liver failure, a new organ is a gift of life. That is clear enough. But for the family of a donor, the opportunity to offer such gifts can be a life-giving gift of a different sort. Six years ago, my son, James, died after a car crash. Within minutes of his death, his kidneys and heart valves were removed for transplantation.

The previous four days had been hellish, as all our hopes for recovery gradually ebbed away. A meeting was scheduled, and I was sent home to rest: the meeting would centre on the withdrawal of life-support. "God give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed": James was going to die.

My stepmother had called my husband, urging him to "warn me" that I might be approached about organ donation. This was a kindness, a defensive gesture that was meant to prepare me for something that could be painful.

It turned out to be more: as I heard the words "organ donation" in that darkness, a light was turned on. Something positive could be done with this tragic situation. I was given "courage to change the things which should be changed".

Organ donation turned out to be part of a process of accept-ance that allowed me to give my precious son back to the God who had given him to me 23 years earlier. The sense of his life as a gift, received and returned with gratitude, has been incredibly important for me.

Organ donation allowed his death to seem not as if he had been taken from me, but rather as if I had given him. In the morning, two strangers would be waking up to new lives that they had hardly dared to hope for.

Life and death are closely connected, and I was reminded in those days of T. S. Eliot's poem "Journey of the Magi", where he says that death and birth seem to be different, but are in fact connected; they are alike. 

FAMILIES of organ donors do not usually know who receives the organs of their loved ones, and often do not receive personal thanks. Yet many speak of the importance of the sense of gift that they feel, having been able to bestow something so precious on complete strangers. For me, there was a sense of being able to invest new hope in the recipients, when all hopes and aspirations for James had gone.

The Welsh Assembly has recently voted to introduce an opt-out system for consent to organ donation, starting in 2015. Currently, as in England, potential donors can register themselves, and, in the event of their death, their family is approached for permission. In some circumstances families of people who are not registered are also approached to make a decision on their behalf.

With a great shortage of organs for transplantation, an "opt-out" scheme would seem to be a logical move in England. In 2008, however, an Organ Donation Taskforce report found that recipients "stressed their need to know that organs had been freely given". Similarly, families "were concerned that an opt- out system might undermine the principles of Organ Donation as a gift".

Equally troubling, if a family in Wales cannot cope with the idea that their loved one's organs will be used, "the law will allow family members to provide information to show the deceased person would not have wished to consent."

It is easy to imagine the sense of violation that they might feel if they cannot provide evidence; although I suspect that if the family objected, no surgeon would go ahead. None of that would do anything to further the cause of organ donation.

MANY recipients of organs find it hard to accept that someone had to die in order that they might live. I spoke with one woman recently who was weighed down with guilt after her liver transplant. When I reassured her that donors and their families can also feel a profound sense of gift and hope from the donation, the woman said that she now felt that she could get on with her life. I have heard similar reactions over and over again.

The emotional well-being of recipients, therefore, cautions us to hope that an organ was not only freely given, but that the donor gained some sort of benefit. If the Government decides to debate the possibility of an opt-out system, these are voices that it should listen to. Change the dynamics of gift, and the prospects for organ donation will not necessarily improve in the way we all want.

The Church hits the headlines with wranglings over women bishops, gay marriage, and anything to do with sex, but there is more to a human body than sex or gender. Sex is not the only way we make a gift of our bodies.

The Church's credibility would benefit if Christians were seen to be concerned with this - a less alluring, but profoundly meaningful sense of donation. And the Christian stress on life as a God-given gift has profound repercussions for the law around organ donation, and opting in and opting out. 

Petra Shakeshaft is an ordinand at Westcott House, Cambridge.