The Marine's Father 

        A nurse took the tired, anxious serviceman to the bedside. "Your son is here," she said to the old man.  She had to repeat the words several times before the patient's eyes opened.
        Heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack, he dimly saw the young uniformed Marine standing outside the oxygen tent.  He reached out his hand. The Marine wrapped his toughened fingers around the old man's limp ones, squeezing a message of love and encouragement.
        The nurse brought a chair so that the Marine could sit beside the bed.  All through the night the young Marine sat there in the poorly lighted ward, holding the old man's hand and offering him words of love and strength.  Occasionally, the nurse suggested that the Marine move away and rest awhile.
        He refused.  Whenever the nurse came into the ward, the Marine was oblivious of her and of the night noises of the hospital - the clanking of the oxygen tank, the laughter of the night staff members exchanging greetings, the cries and moans of the other patients.
        Now and then she heard him say a few gentle words.  The dying man said nothing, only held tightly to his son all through the night.
        Along towards dawn, the old man died.  The Marine released the now lifeless hand he had been holding and went to tell the nurse.  While she did what she had to do, he waited.
        Finally, she returned.  She started to offer words of sympathy, but the Marine interrupted her.
        "Who was that man?" he asked.
        The nurse was startled, "He was your father," she answered.
        "No, he wasn't," the Marine replied. "I never saw him before in my life."
        "Then why didn't you say something when I took you to him?"
        "I knew right away there had been a mistake, but I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn't here.  When I realized that he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, knowing how much he needed me, I stayed."

        The next time someone needs you just be there.  Stay.

        We are not human beings going through a temporary spiritual experience.
        We are spiritual beings going through a temporary human experience.
~Author Unknown~

(Author unknown, to me anyway. But this is one of those articles that I wish I had written. I don’t remember who sent it to me, but thanks to someone we got the blessing of reading about this miracle that happened right here in our own neck of the woods. God is everywhere: did you ever doubt it?)

Smell the 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 the couple's new daughter, Dana 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".

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. 

As the weeks went by, she 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 mother had predicted.

Today, five years later, Dana is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she is 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 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.  

 "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me."  (Phil. 4:13) 

Subject: GOD BLESS TEXAS

Have you ever looked at a map of the world? Look at Texas with me just for a second. That picture, with the Panhandle and the Gulf Coast , and the

 Red River and the Rio Grande is as much a part of you as anything ever will be. As soon as anyone anywhere in the world looks at it, they know what

 it is. It's Texas . Pick any kid off the street in Japan and draw him a picture of Texas in the dirt, and he'll know what it is. What happens if I show you

 a picture of any other state? You might get it maybe after a second or two, but who else would? And even if you do, does it ever stir any feelings in you?

In every man, woman and child on this planet, there is a person who wishes just once he could be a real live Texan and get up on a horse or ride off in

 a pickup. There is a little bit of Texas in everyone.

Texas is the Alamo . Texas is 183 men standing in a church, facing thousands of Mexican nationals, fighting for freedom, who had the chance to walk out

 and save themselves, but stayed instead to fight and die for the cause of freedom.

We send our kids to schools named William B. Travis and James Bowie and Davy Crockett, and do you know why? Because those men saw a line

 in the sand and they decided to cross it and be heroes.

John Wayne paid to do the movie The Alamo himself. That is the Spirit of Texas.

Texas is Sam Houston capturing Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana at San Jacinto .
Texas has huge forests of Piney Woods like the Davy Crockett and Sam Houston National Forests .
Texas is breathtaking mountains in the Big Bend .
Texas is the unparalleled beauty of bluebonnet fields in the Texas Hill Country.

Texas is floating the rivers of the Hill Country on a hot summer day.

Texas is the beautiful, warm beaches of the Gulf Coast of South Texas.

Texas is beaches you can drive on and have many memorable bonfires with close friends.

Texas is that warm feeling you get when someone asks where you're from.

Texas is the shiny skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas.
Texas is world record bass from places like Lake Fork .

Texas is Mexican foods like nowhere else, not even Mexico .

Texas is chicken fried steak and world famous Bar-B-Q.

Texas is the Fort Worth Stockyards, Bass Hall, the Mort Myerson in Dallas , The Ballpark in Arlington , the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington ,

the American Airlines Center in Dallas , and the Astrodome (the Reliant Stadium now) in Houston .

Texas is larger-than-life legends like:   Michael DeBakey, Nick Trippodo, Ann Richards, Denton Cooley, Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, Gene Autry, Audie Murphy,

Tommy Lee Jones, Waylon Jennings, Farrah Fawcett, Janis Joplin, Sandra Bullock, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Landry, Eva Longoria Parker, Darrell Royal,

ZZ Top, Roger Staubach Eric Dickerson, Earl Campbell, Nolan Ryan, Sam Rayburn, Howard Hughes, George H. W. Bush, Lyndon B.Johnson,

George W . Bush, and let's not forget GEORGE STRAIT , the Big Bopper, Tex Ritter, George Jones, Clay Walker, John Crosby, Mark Chestnut,

and Tracy Byrd to name ONLY a few.

Texas has great companies like Dell Computer, Texas Instruments, EDS and Compaq, Whataburger, Southwest Airlines, Bell Helicopter, and LOCKHEED MARTIN AEROSPACE, Home of the F-16Jet Fighter and the JSF Fighter,Valero.

Texas is NASA.

Texas is huge herds of cattle, beautiful horses and miles of crops.

Texas is home to the world famous King Ranch.

Texas is home to the most amazing sunsets of gold over an empty field.

Texas is skies blackened with doves and fields full of deer.
Texas is a place where towns and cities shut down to watch the local high school football game on Friday nights and for the Cowboys on Monday

Night Football at the new Cowboy Stadium, and for the Night In Old San Antonio River Parade in San Antonio .

To drive across Texas is to drive 1/3 the way across the United States .

Texas has ocean beaches, deserts, lakes and rivers, mountains and prairies, and modern cities.

If it isn't already in Texas , we probably don't need it. No one does anything bigger or better than it's done in Texas .

By federal law, Texas is the only state in the U.S. That can fly its flag at the same height as the U.S. Flag. Think about that for a second. You fly

the Stars and Stripes at 20 feet in Maryland , California ,
or Maine , and your state flag, whatever it is, goes at 17 feet. You fly the Stars and Stripes in
front of Klein Oak High or anyplace else at 20 feet, the Lone Star flies at the same height - 20
feet. You know why? Because its the only state that was a Republic before it became a state.

Also, being a Texan is as high as being an American down here. Our capitol is the only one in the
country that is taller than the capitol building in Washington , DC .  And we can divide our state into
five states at any time if we wanted to!  We can become a republic again at any time the voters of
Texas choose, and we included these things as part of the deal when we came on.

That's the best part, right there. Texas even has its own power grid!! And don't even lie to yourself.  Did I mention the LIVE music capitol of

the world?  If you are a REAL TEXAN, you won't even need to be told to pass this on.GOD BLESS TEXAS