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 forced Diana, only 24 weeks pregnant, to 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, 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 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 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 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, what so ever, 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, Danae 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, 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.
healing.
rain.
just BE.
robin.
