Do you smell that?

Yesterday was our March Of Dimes Walk for the Starkville area! Alex was chosen as ambassador and it was a blast. Getting to share the joy of Alex's life with others is such a blessing. Although no one can truly understand where we have been or what we went through it was AWESOME to get to let them peer into that window. Alex hammed it up for everyone too... We got interviewed for the WCBI news and were on the 10:00 news! PLUS.. had an interview with The Starkville Daily News. I have to go buy one today to see if we are in it! With no family here I just love it when others shower Alex with love as if they were our family! Connie the director of the March of Dimes for our area does just that, and Alex loves her right back!! We raised $230.00 and were very excited with that. I received this e-mail this morning and thought it went well with my day yesterday!!

DO YOU SMELL THAT?

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. 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.