As
the doctor walked into the small hospital
room of Diana Blessing, she was 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, Dana Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and
weighing only one pound 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 Dana
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. 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 Dana 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.
As the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce
of weight here and an ounce of strength there. At
last, when Dana 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, Dana went home
from the hospital, just as her mother had
predicted.
Five
years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty
young girl with glittering gray eyes and an
unquenchable zest for life. She showed no signs
whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment.
Simply, she was 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 Dana 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, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and
several other adults sitting nearby when she
suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her
chest, little Dana asked, "Do you smell
that?"
Smelling
the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells
like rain."
Dana 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, Dana 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 Dana 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 Dana on His chest and it is
His loving scent that she remembers so well.
Ask and it shall be given
to you; seek and you shall
find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
For everyone who
asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him
who knocks it shall be opened.-Mathew 7:7-8-
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will
revive me; You will stretch out your right hand against the wrath of my
enemies, and your right hand will save me. Psalm 138:7 |
Tim
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