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.


"I can do all things in Him who strengthens me."

The love of God is like the ocean, you can see its
beginning, but not its end.