A talk Dustin gave in the sacrament meeting of the Charlotte Third Ward, Charlotte North Carolina South Stake, Mother’s Day, Sunday, 11 May 1997.
Good afternoon, brothers and sisters, and happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers. Today I’m going to tell you about the most wonderful, the most special, and the most amazing woman in my life: my mother. I’m going to tell you how she has influenced and does influence me to be the upstanding young man, student in school, and Aaronic-Priesthood holder I hope to be.
As is the case with any role model, she has probably influenced me the most with her example. What an incredible role model my mother is! She is caring, compassionate, kind, hard-working, trustworthy … she’s the ideal Scout, she really is, she just doesn’t like camping.
One thing she has particularly influenced me by her example to be recently is trustworthy. She told me one time not too long ago that there have been people to tell her things in confidence that she would not tell another person. Not to this day has she told another person, not one, not even me, and many of those people she no longer keeps in touch with, yet she never will tell another soul what those people have told her in confidence. I don’t think she has ever realized or that she even knows what an impact that has had on me. See, I can recall one time in particular that somebody told me a secret and then a few days or weeks later I told that secret to the one person I was particularly forbidden to tell. None of the people involved really seemed to care, myself included, but I did feel remorseful about doing what I did a couple of years later when my mother told me what she has not done: told somebody else a secret told to her. This has brought me some respect among the people I know, and I have even been able to act as a mediator or peace-maker between two arguing people because of it.
When it comes to hard-working, my mother is this and with hard-working in all caps bold, underlined, italicized, and highlighted. She works all morning before work, works all day at work, comes home exhausted, works some more, and then still puts up with me. I think that no matter how hard I work could I ever do just one-sixteenth of the work that she does.
Oftentimes when some event happens in the life of someone we know, my mom does something for them that shows them she cares. Again, I don’t think that she realizes what an influence she is on me.
These are just three of the innumerable ways my mother influences me and my life and everything I do. I would like to tell her and you how much I love her, and to do this, this morning I wrote a poem. I haven’t edited it, but I hope that it will do.
I know a woman that is like no other.
I think she is a superwoman,
But yet I simply call her my mother.
Given to me by God was this woman;
I think she is an angel in disguise,
Even when she just looks at me with her eyes.
She is patient, kind, caring, and sweet.
I think to myself, She just can’t be beat.
She puts up with me; I treasure her.
Gifted is she and gifted I am not
To do all she does — that I know for sure.
Each day I get well taught.
By whom? The answer I already know;
The person — can there be somebody so?
There is. Really, there is, and I got her.
The least I can do is say, “I love her.”
Who is this person? Who else but my mother.
Mom, I love you very much and I can’t thank you enough for all you do for me. And this I say in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
This is the third of four installments this year in which we record the talks Dustin gave in church as a youth. Previous installments are:
Dialann 