The Smell of Rain
A cold March wind danced around the
dead of night in
Dallas as the Doctor walked into the
small hospital
room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy
from surgery,
her husband David held her hand as
they braced
themselves for the latest
news, that afternoon of March 10,1991.
Complications had
forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant,
to undergo an
emergency cesarean to deliver the
couple's new
daughter, Danae Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only
one pound and nine
ounces, they already knew she was
perilously
premature. Still, the doctor's soft
words dropped
like bombs. "I don't think she's going
to make it,"
he said, as kindly as he could.
"There's only a
10-percent chance she will live
through the night, and even then, if
by some slim
chance she does make it, her future
could be a very
cruel one."
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana
listened as
the doctor described the devastating
problems Danae
would likely face if she survived. She
would never
walk, she would never talk, she would
probably be
blind, and she would certainly be
prone to other
catastrophic conditions from cerebral
palsy to
complete mental retardation,
and on and on.
"No! No!" was all Diana could say. She
and David,
with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had
long dreamed
of the day they would have a daughter
to become a family of four. Now,
within a matter of
hours, that dream was slipping away.
Through the dark
hours of morning as Danae held onto
life by the
thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and
out of sleep,
growing more and more determined that
their tiny
daughter would live-and live to be a
healthy, happy
young girl.
But David, fully awake and listening
to additional
dire details of their daughter's
chances of ever
leaving the hospital alive, much less
healthy, knew he
must confront his wife with the
evitable. David
walked in and said that we needed to
talk about making
funeral arrangements.
Diana remembers 'I felt so bad for him
because he was
doing everything trying to include me
in what was
going on, but I just wouldn't listen,
I couldn't
listen. I said, "No, that is not going
to happen, no
way! I don't care what the doctors
say; Danae is not
going to die! One day she will be just
fine, and she
will be coming home with us!" As if
willed to live by
Diana's determination, Danae clung to
life hour after
hour, with the help of every medical
machine. Diana marveled how her miniature body could
endure.
But as those
first days passed, a new agony set in
for
David and Diana. Because Dana's
underdeveloped
nervous system was essentially 'raw,'
the lightest
kiss or caress only intensified her
discomfort, so
they couldn't even cradle their tiny
baby girl against
their chests to offer the strength of
their love.
All they could do, as
Danae struggled alone beneath the
ultraviolet light in
the tangle of tubes and wires, was to
pray that God
would stay close to their precious
little girl.
There was never a moment when Danae
suddenly grew
stronger. But as the weeks went by,
she did slowly
gain an ounce of weight here and an
ounce of strength
there. At last, when Danae turned two
months old,
her parents were able to hold her in
their arms for
the very first time. The doctors continued to gently but grimly
warn that her
chances of
surviving, much less living any kind
of normal life,
were next to zero.
Danae went home from the hospital,
just as her mother
had predicted. Today, five years
later, Danae is a
petite but feisty young girl with
glittering gray eyes
and an unquenchable zest for life. She
shows no signs,
what so ever, of any
mental or physical impairment. Simply,
she is
everything a little girl can be and
more- but that
happy ending is far from the end of
her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near
her home in Irving, Texas, Danae was
sitting in her
mother's lap in the bleachers of a
local ballpark
where her brother Dustin's baseball
team was
practicing. As always, Danae was
chattering nonstop
with her mother and several other
adults sitting
nearby when she suddenly fell silent.
Hugging her arms
across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you
smell that?"
Smelling the air and detecting the
approach of a
thunderstorm, Diana replied, 'Yes, it
smells like
rain."
Danae closed her eyes and again asked,
"Do you smell
that?" Once again, her mother replied,
"Yes, I think
we're about to get wet, it smells like
rain. Still
caught in the moment, Danae shook her
head, patted her
thin shoulders with her small hands
and loudly
announced, "No, it smells like
Him. It smells like God when you lay
your head on His
chest."
Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Danae
then happily
hopped down to play with the other
children. Before
the rains came, her daughter's words
confirmed what
Diana and all the members of the
extended Blessing
family had known, a least
in their hearts, all along.
During those long days and nights of
her first two
months of her life, when her nerves
were too sensitive
for them to touch her, God was holding
Danae on His
chest and it is His loving scent that
she remembers so
well.
You now have 1 of 2 choices...you can
either pass this
on and let other people catch the
chills like you did,
or don't let the other people you know be touched like you just were.
The choice is yours.
Author not submited
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