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Do
You Smell That?
A cold March wind
danced around
the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor
walked into the small hospital room of 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 new
daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound 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.
Five years later, Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an
unquenchable zest
for life. She showed no
signs
whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was 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.
The love of God is like the ocean, you can see its beginning, but not its end.
Contributed
by
Karin Tymn
Defining
Moments
Archives
Copyright
© 2006, Jace Carlton. All International Rights Reserved.
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