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A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand. That afternoon, 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 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. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, 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 dreamed of the day they would become a family of four. Now, in a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away. "David 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, but I just 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!"
Danae clung to life 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. All they could do was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.
As the weeks went by, she slowly gained weight and strength. When Danae turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her. Two months later, though doctors continued to warn that her chances of survival-much less living a normal life-were next to zero, Danae went home, just as her mother had predicted.
Five years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl. She shows no signs of any mental or physical impairments. But this happy ending is far from the end of her story. One blistering summer afternoon, Danae was sitting in her mother's lap watching her brother's baseball team practice. As always, Danae was chattering non-stop with her mother. Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you smell that?"
Detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, Yes, 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 hopped down to play. Her daughter's words confirmed what the Blessing family had known all along. During the first two months of 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.
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly!
There was grandfather, his little grandson often came in the evenings to sit at his knee and ask the many questions that children ask. One day the grandson came to his grandfather with a look of anger on his face. Grandfather said, "Come, sit, tell me what has happened today."
The child sat and leaned his chin on his Grandfather's knee. Looking up into the wrinkled, nut brown face and the kind dark eyes; the child's anger turned to quite tears. The boy said, "I went to the town today, with my father, to trade the furs he has collected over the past several months. I was happy to go, because father said that since I had helped him with the trapping, I could get something for me. Something that I wanted. I was so excited to be in the trading post, I have not been there before. I looked at many things and finally found a metal knife! It was small, but good size for me, so father got it for me."
Here the boy laid his head against his grandfather's knee and became silent. The Grandfather, softly placed his hand on the boys raven hair and said, "and then what happened?".
Without lifting his head, the boy said, "I went outside to wait for father, and to admire my new knife in the sunlight. Some town boys came by and saw me, they got all around me and started saying bad things. They called me dirty and stupid and said that I should not have such a fine knife. The largest of these boys, pushed me back and I fell over one of the other boys. I dropped my knife and one of them snatched it up and they all ran away, laughing." Here the boy's anger returned, "I hate them, I hate them all!"
The Grandfather, with eyes that have seen too much, lifted his grandson's face so his eyes looked into the boys. Grandfather said, "let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times. It is as if there are two wolves inside me, one is white and one is black.
The White Wolf is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. But will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way. But, the Black Wolf, is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing. Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."
The boy, looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes, and asked "which one wins Grandfather?" The Grandfather, smiled and said, "The one I feed."
"Think about this one,alot of truth here my friend " Winters
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While I tried to be very mindful of what pictures and other images I used to make my site I know that there is always that possibility I may have used something in doing so that was not mine to use.Please if you see anything on any of my pages that belongs to someone else just let me know,and I will remove it,or give credit to that person.
Thank you..Peace to all..Winters Child
