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. 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 Caesarean 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 slowly gained 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 Parents had prayed for.

Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering grey 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 ballpark where her brother Dustin’s baseball team was practising. 

As always, Dana was chattering non-stop 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.

 Did this Story touch your heart like it did mine? that was God reminding us that He holds us in the Storm and that He brings the  Rainbow.

  The Love of God has no beginning or end — It is eternal as He is eternal…

His Love  is unlike the Ocean, in that  there is no Height that it cannot reach or Depth that it cannot go,

 It always Trusts, always Hopes, always Perseveres, keeps no record of wrongs, never gives up and it never fails.

“Amazing Love!”

 Rest awhile now and sing this beautiful song in thankfulness to our wonderful Awesome King of Kings and Lord of Lord  whose Love is so Amazing for us.

Music- Amazing Love

My Lord what Love is this
That paid so dearly
That I, the guilty one, may go free

CHORUS:

Amazing Love oh what sacrifice
The Son of God given for me
My debt He paid and my death He died
That I might live

And so they watched Him die
Despised and rejected
But oh the blood He shed, flowed for me

CHORUS

And now, this Love of Christ
Will flow like rivers
Come wash your guilt away
And live again

CHORUS

My Lord what love is this
That paid so dearly
That I, the guilty one, may go free

CHORUS:
Amazing Love oh what sacrifice

The Son of God given for me
My debt He paid and my death He died
That I might live

And so they watched Him die
Despised and rejected
But oh the blood He shed, flowed for me

CHORUS

And now, this Love of Christ
Will flow like rivers
Come wash your guilt away
And live again

CHORUS