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 caesarian to deliver the couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctors 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% chance she will live through the night and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, he 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. She would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation. And on and on. "No, no," wall Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed fo 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 drugged 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 daughters chances of ever leaving the hospital alive, much less healthy, knew he must confront his wife with inevitable. "David walked in and said that we needed to talk about making funeral arrangements," Diana remembereds. "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, now 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 cling to life hour after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature body could endure. But as thosed first day 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 baby 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 her and an ounce of strength there. At last, when Danae turned 2 months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And 2 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 predicted. Today, 5 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 metal 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 blechers of a 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 went silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you smeel that?" Once again, he 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 thing shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, its 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 daughters word 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 2 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!
author unknown
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