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 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 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
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 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
ultra-violet 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'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 remembers
so well.