The Smell of God
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked
into the small hospital room of Diane Blessing. Still groggy from surgery, her
husband David held her, bracing themselves for the latest news. That afternoon
March 10, 1991, complications forced Diana, only 24 weeks pregnant, to undergo
emergency surgery. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound 9 ounces, Danae
Lu arrived by Cesarean delivery. They already knew she was perilously premature.
Still the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.
"I don't think she going to make it," he said as kindly as he could. "There's
only a 10% chance she will live through the night. 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 Danae could face if she survived. She would never walk, nor
talk -- probably be blind; prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral
palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on. Through the dark hours of
morning as Danae held onto life by the thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out
of drugged sleep growing more and more determined their daughter would live to
be a happy, healthy young girl. Fully awake, David knew he must confront his
wife with the inevitable. David walked in and said that they needed to talk
about making funeral arrangements. Diana remembers saying, "No, that is not
going to happen, 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. But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana
because Danae's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially "raw." Kisses or
caresses only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their
tiny baby against their chest. All they could do as Danae struggled beneath the
ultra violet light was to pray that God would stay close to their precious
little girl. At last when Danae turned 2 months old, her parents were able to
hold her for the very first time. Two months later, Danae went home from the
hospital just as her mother predicted, even though doctors grimly warned that
her chances of surviving, much less a normal life, were almost zero.
TODAY 5 years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering
gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs whatever of any
mental or physical impairments. She is everything a little girl can be and
more-but that happy ending is far from the end of the story.
One blistering summer afternoon in 1996 in Irving, Texas, Danae was sitting in
her mother's lap at the ballpark where her brother Dustin's baseball team was
practicing. As always Danae was busy chattering when she suddenly fell silent.
Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked her mother, "Do you smell that?"
Smelling the air and detecting a thunderstorm approaching, Diana replied, "Yes,
it smells like rain."
Danae closed her eyes again and asked, "Do you smell that?"
Once again her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet--it smells
like rain."
Caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulders 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 other
children before the rain came. Her daughter's words confirmed, at least in their
hearts, what Diana and all the members of the Blessing family had known all
along. During those long days and nights of her first 2 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 well.
Intimacy with God is everything! Do you smell the scent of God when you lay your
head on His chest?
Submitted by Marie Russ
Check out TruthorFiction.com for more info on this true story