At
the end of this story,
it gives you two options.
I think you will figure out what option I chose.
A
cold March wind danced
around the dead of night
in 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 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 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 dropp Ed 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.
There
was never a moment
when Dana 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 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 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 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.
"I can do all things in
Him who strengthens me"