The smell of rain                                                                         by truth story

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. 
IT"S  YOUR CALL! 
"I can do all things in Him who strengthens me."  
 This morning when the Lord opened a window to Heaven, He saw me, and   He  asked: "My child, what is your greatest  wish for today?"  I   responded:   
"Lord please, take care of the person who is reading this message, their family  and  their special friends. They deserve it and I  love  them   very much"