> 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 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, I don't want to listen to 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. As those first days
passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because
Danae'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.
>
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 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,
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.

John Trevino

oh darn, a tear is in my eye. Beautiful.

Wow!! Thanks!!