Youth

Mother Rescued Us

By Patricia Auxier

When I was six, my little sister and I were watching our older sister’s basketball game. My dad left, and then we decided that we wanted to go home with him, so we ran after him in the rain. When we couldn’t find him, we went back to the gym to go home with our mom, but by the time we entered the gym, everyone in the building was gone.

I remember huddling in a doorframe, trying to get my little sister and me out of the rain, praying that someone would come. Then I remember hearing the door to our red van slam shut, and we went running toward the sound. Then came one of the most vivid childhood memories I have: our mother enfolding us in her arms “as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings” (3 Nephi 10:4). My mother had rescued us, and I never felt more secure than I did at that moment.

As I think of her influence on me, I see that my mother’s life has pointed me toward the Savior and has shown me what it means to “lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees” (D&C 81:5). She relied on Jesus Christ, who gave her strength “beyond [her] own” (“Lord, I Would Follow Thee,” Hymns, no. 220).

I never felt more secure than I did at the moment my mother enfolded us in her arms.