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 tomake 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 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 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 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 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 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 remembered so
well.
"You can do all things through Christ which
strengthens you." Philippians 4:13
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