It was a cold March wind dancing around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room for 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 the couple's first daughter; Dana Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing one pound nine ounces, the surgeon's soft words dropped like bombs. "I don't think she's going to make it. There's only a 10% 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 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.
Diana and David, with their five 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, against all odds, Dana lived through the night and days hence. But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for these parents. Because Dana's undeveloped nervous system was essentially raw, the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort. So her mom and dad couldn't even cuddle their tiny baby girl in offering the strength of their love. As Dana struggled alone beneath the ultra-violet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, he parents prayed that God would stay close to their precious little girl. There never was a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger. But as weeks went by, slowly she put on weight.
When Dana turned two months old, Diana and David were able to hold her in their arms for the first time. And two months, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of survival, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero; Dana went home from the hospital. Five years later Dana was a petite and feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and a unquenchable zest for life. She showed no signs what-so-ever of any mental or physical impairment.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother's lap at a local ball park. As always, Dana was chattering non-stop with her mother and several other adults sitting close by, when she suddenly fell quiet. Hugging her arms around her chest, little Dana asked, "do you smell that?" Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied to her daughter's question, "Yes, it smells like rain." Dana closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?". Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, we're about to get wet." 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 hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and her extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days and nights of Dana's first two months of life, when her nerves were too sensitive for her parents to touch her; God was holding Dana and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.
Makes you wonder - doesn't it? "God tends His flock like a shepherd (Psalm 23). He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart" (Isaiah 40:11). If you have the kind of fear Dana's parents had, you have everything to gain by asking Jesus Christ to personally take care of what you fear losing. The beauty of God's love is that He has no bounds - He reaches out to all of us because He chooses to, inviting us to reach out to Him.
Be well.
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