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 doctors
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 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
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 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's 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.


"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing
salvation to all men." Titus 2:11

God Bless...Pass it on!