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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 Cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter,
Dana 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 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.
Through the dark hours of morning as Dana 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 we needed to talk about
making funeral arrangements. Diana remembers she 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. Dana 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, Dana 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 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. Today, five
years later, Dana 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 impairment. 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, Dana was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ballpark
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, 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 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 Dana on His
chest and it is His loving scent that she remember so well.
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