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 word 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, the little baby girl 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 that 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 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 he 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 Blessings 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.
Author Unknown
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