Dana Lu Blessing

This story will give you the chills.

At the end of this story, it gives you two options.
I think you will figure out what option I chose.

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 Caesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter Dana Lu Blessing. At 12" 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 make it 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, and 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.

Through the dark hours of morning as Dana held onto life by the thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of sleep, growing more and more determined that her 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 daughters 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 she 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, this is not going to happen, no way! I don't care what the doctors say. Dana 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, Dana clung to life hour after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her minature body could endure. 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 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. Today, five years later, Dana is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an un-quenchable zest for life. She shows no signs, whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. 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, Dana was sitting in her mothers 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 then happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughters words confirmed what Diana and all of 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.

You now have one of two choices. You can either pass this on and let other people catch the chills like you did or you can delete it and act like it didn't touch your heart like it did mine.
IT'S YOUR CALL!

"I can do all things in Him who strengthens me."
(Phil. 4:13)

Dede's Note:

I would like to dedicate this page to my good friend, Ralph. Thank you my precious friend for sharing such an uplifting story of Gods Love & Capabilities......
Sometimes we just don't trust God enough! What is wrong with us? As Dick would say, we need to wake up and smell the salt........
Our God is ever faithful and ever capable..........
God Bless You All & Much Love..........

Click here to Share this page.