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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 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, 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, Diana and David 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 would be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation.

No! No! was all Diana could say. Through the dark hours of morning as Danae held onto life by the thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of sleep, more and more determined that their tiny daughter live and live to be a healthy happy young girl. But David fully awake and listening to the dire details of their daughter's chances knew he must confront his wife with the inevitable. David said we need to talk about making funeral arrangements. I said, No, that's not going to happen, 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.

Danae clung to life hour after hour, day after day as she struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires there was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks and months went by she slowly gain an ounce of weight here, and a little strength there. At last Danae's parents were able to hold her, doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of a 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 little girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs what-so-ever of any mental or physical impairments.

One blistering afternoon Danae was sitting in her mother's lap chattering nonstop, she suddenly fell silent. Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Danae ask Do You Smell That, yes it smells like rain. Danae closed her eyes and again ask Do You Smell That, and once again her mother replied, yes it smells like rain I think we're about to get wet. 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 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.