~a true story~
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
Caesarean 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 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 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 held onto life by
the thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of 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 they
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 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!"
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 under-developed 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 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. 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 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 Danae on
His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.
"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men."
Titus 2:11
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as of November 17, 1999
