That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 
24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Caesarian to deliver the couple's 
new daughter, Dana 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 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. 

Today, five years later, Dana 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 impairment. 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, 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. 

Author Unknown

Whisper Willow 2003

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