The Smell of Rain
A TrueStory
Author Anonymous
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas,
Texas as
the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing.
Still
groggy from surgery, her husband David held her, bracing
themselves for
the latest news. That afternoon, March 10, 1991, complications
forced
Diana, only 24 weeks pregnant, to undergo emergency surgery. At
12
inches long and weighing only one pound, 9 ounces, Danae Lu
arrived by
cesarean delivery. 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%
chance she will live through the night. 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 could face if she survived. She
would
never walk, nor talk--- probably be blind; prone to other
catastrophic
conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation,
and on
and on. Through the dark hours of morning as Danae held onto life
by the
thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of drugged sleep,
growing more
and more determined their daughter would live to be a happy,
healthy
young girl. Fully awake, David knew he must confront his wife
with
inevitable. David walked in and said that they needed to talk
about
making funeral arrangements. Diana remembers saying, "No,
that is not
going to happen. 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. But as those first days passed, a new agony set in
for David
and Diana because Danae's underdeveloped nervous system was
essentially "raw."
Kisses or caresses only intensified her discomfort, so they
couldn't
even cradle their tiny baby against their chest. All they could
do as
Danae struggled beneath the ultra violet light was to pray that
God
would stay close to their precious little girl.
At last when Danae turned two months old, her parents were able
to hold
her for the very first time. Two months later, Danae went home
from the
hospital just as her mother predicted, even though doctors grimly
warned
that her chances of surviving, much less a normal life,were
almost zero.
Today, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering
gray eyes
and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs whatever of
any mental or
physical impairments. Danae is everything a little girl can be
and more
- but that happy ending is far from the end of the story.
One blistering summer afternoon in 1996 in Irving, Texas, Danae
was
sitting in her mother's lap at the ballpark where her brother
Dustin's
baseball team was practicing. As always Danae was busy chattering
when
she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest,
Danae asked
her mother, "Do you smell that?" Smelling the air and
detecting a
thunderstorm approaching, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells
like rain."
Danae closed her eyes
again and asked, "Do you smell that?" Once again
her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet -
it smells
like rain." Caught in the moment, Danae shook her head,
patted her thin
shoulders 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 other children before the rain came. Her daughter's words
confirmed, at least in their hearts, what Diana and all the
members of
the Blessing family had known 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 well.., the smell of rain.
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