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
pre-mature.

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 doctors
described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if
she survived. She would never walk, she would never talk, she
would probably be blind, 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.
he 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 inevitable.

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 every thing, 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 and marvel her  miniature
body could  endure. But as those first days passed, a new agony
set in for David and Diana. Because Danae's under-developed 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. And two months
later-though 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, whatsoever, of any mental or physical impairments. 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 ball park where her brother
Dustin baseball team  was practicing. As always, Danae was chattering
non-stop 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, at 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.

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men."
Titus  2:11.   God Bless...Pass it on!

author is unknow to me

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