the lion and the lamb: It smells like Him

Thought I would share this inspiring story of how when even all hope seems lost, love finds a way:

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in
Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room
of Diana Blessing. She was 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 couple's new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound
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
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.

Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young
girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for
life. She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or
physical impairment. Simply, she was 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 ball park 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, little 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 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
remembers so well.