| Aunt Clemys Farm Girl |
Posted - Aug 25 2008 : 08:43:18 AM
The rain this morning reminded me of something a dear friend shared years ago --- and would like to share with all of you as well.
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 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,
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".
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 she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic
conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental
retardationand 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 Danae held onto life by the
thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of sleep, growing
more and more determined that their 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 daughter's 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 'I 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, that is not going to happen, no way! 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!"
As if willed to live by Diana's determination,Danae clung to life hour after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature 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 Danae 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 Danae 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 Danae 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.
Danae went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted. Today, five years later,Danae is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs, what so ever, of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she is everything a little girl can be and more- but that happy
ending is farfrom the end of her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Danae was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ballpark where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing. As always, Danae was chatteringnonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent.
Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you smell that?"
Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana
replied, "Yes, it smells like rain."
Danae 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, 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, a least in their hearts, all along.
During the first two 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 so well.
Aunt Clemys Farm Girl
Farm Girl #300
Kansas to Massachusetts |
