I got this in an email from my mom. It gave my goosebumps and made me weepy-eyed to read it. A cold March wind danced around the dead of nightin Dallas 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 bracedthemselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complicationshad forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergoan emergency Cesarean to deliver couple’s newdaughter, Dana Lu Blessing.At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nineounces, 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, shewould probably be blind, and she would certainly beprone toother catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsyto 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 amatter of hours, that dream was slipping away. But as those first days passed, a new agony set infor David and Diana. Because Dana’s underdeveloped nervous system wasessentially ‘raw’, the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn’t evencradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do,as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultravioletlight in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious littlegirl. There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grewstronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain anounce 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 thevery first time. And two months later, though doctors continued togently but grimly warn that her chances ofsurviving, much less livingany kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother hadpredicted.
Five years later, when Dana was a petite butfeisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and anunquenchable zest forlife. She showed no signs whatsoever of any mentalor physical impairment. Simply, she was everything alittlegirl 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 inher mother’s lapin the bleachers of a local ball park 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 athunderstorm, Diana replied, “Yes, it smells likerain Dana closed her eyes and again asked, “Do yous mell that?”Once again, her mother replied, Yes, I think we’reabout to get wet. It smells like rain.”
Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head,patted her thin shoulders with her small hands andloudly 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 totouch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.
I can do all things in Him who strengthens me.”This morning when the Lord opened a window to Heaven, He saw me, and He asked “My child, what is your greatest wish for today?”I responded: Lord please, take care of the person who is reading this message, their family and their special friends. They deserve it and I love them very much” The love of God is like the ocean, you can see its beginning, but not its end.
