Heaven Scent
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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.

Author Unknown