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The
Smell of Rain
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 force Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant,
to undergo an emergency cesarean section 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
drugged 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 we 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 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 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 rom 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 nonstop 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 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.
