🌊 Seaside, Oregon · The Cove · The Columbia River 🌊
🦅 To My Mother, Nina Delores Smith
Momma Eagle — The Love Beneath My Wings
Before I Carried a Lamp for Others, You Helped Light My Way
A son’s dedication · Nathanael Elijah Smith, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, DipACLM
💛 This Dedication Begins With You
Mom, this dedication begins with you. Before there were nursing degrees, professional credentials, books, gardens of flourishing, or a mission to help others heal, there was a little boy who needed his mother. I was that little boy.
You were there in the daily work of loving me, teaching me, feeding me, and encouraging me. You were there through a childhood in which breathing itself could become frightening. To me, you are the best mother in the world, and I want these pages to say why.
Before I became a nurse practitioner, I was a child who needed care. Your love is part of the foundation of the caregiver I became.
📖 The Verse I Was Trying to Remember
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:6 (King James Version)
I dedicate this verse to you, Nina Delores Smith, for teaching me about Jesus Christ, the Bible, love, family, and perseverance.
This verse is wisdom, not a guarantee. It does not mean that faithful parents control every choice a child makes, or that a home of faith is spared from suffering. Ours was not. What it means in my story is simpler: the Scripture you taught me stayed with me. It came with me through illness and pain, through family difficulties, through school and nursing, and into the mission I carry today. I did not depart from it, because you planted it deep.
🐚 A Seaside Girl
Mom was born and raised in Seaside, Oregon, a town of ocean wind, the Cove, the Prom, and the long gray-blue Pacific. Seaside is her home, and so it is part of mine.
She grew up working at her father’s grocery store, Ken and Sons Select Market on Avenue U, alongside Grandpa Kenneth and Grandma Carolyn. She worked there all the time, just like Grandpa did. And she did not stop until I was fully raised.
Even in the seasons when we were apart, she kept contributing to our family. She has spent her whole life taking care of everyone else before herself. Mom, you are the most selfless person I have ever met.
🏊 Every Summer at the Pool
Every summer, Mom took me to swimming lessons at the Sunset Empire recreation pool in Seaside. She kept bringing me, summer after summer, until I became a glorious swimmer. For a boy whose lungs so often struggled, the water became a place of strength.
Thanks be to God, I became a real human otter. Maybe that is why the otter at the South Jetty felt like such a gift.
📸 Family, Seaside & 250 Avenue U
My grandpa and mom’s family grocery store was at 250 Avenue U, Seaside, Oregon. These photographs bring together our family memories, the coast we love, and the artwork inspired by them.
Read Grandpa Kenneth T. Smith’s story — The Keeper of the Neighborhood Market.
🌲 Family in The EVERgreen Chronicles™
Tribute illustrations and book-cover artwork celebrating Mom and our family.
🫁 When Breathing Was Not Guaranteed
Most people take a breath without thinking about it. As a child, I could not always do that.
My first severe asthma attack came when I was three years old. Severe asthma stayed with me all through my childhood. The attacks were frequent and frightening, and some became emergencies that involved Life Flight. Eczema and severe allergic rhinitis added to the burden.
Asthma was not a footnote in our home. It interrupted days and nights. It shaped what I could do and how our family lived. It was a major part of our lives, and so was the mother who cared for me through it.
The emergencies were only part of the story. Between them came the ordinary days, and the ordinary days still needed tending. A child who has been frightened still has to eat, go to school, sleep, and be reassured. Mom, you were there for that long work between the crises.
When I speak about flourishing today, I speak as someone who has known physical vulnerability, and the importance of being loved while living with it. I know what it is to need help with something others do without thinking. That is one reason compassion matters so much to me now.
Asthma is still part of my life today, and I still rely on good medical care. My gratitude for you does not need any claim beyond the truth: you cared for me, and that care mattered.
🥪 Love Folded Inside a Lunch Bag
Some of the care that shaped my life came folded inside a lunch bag. Some came as a meal, a clean shirt, a word of encouragement, or another chance to hear Scripture. These were everyday acts, repeated across a childhood. Their familiarity did not make them small.
You prepared the meals that fed me. You washed the clothes I wore. You packed my lunches and tucked encouraging notes inside them, so that a hard day at school could hold a word from home. You worked to get me to school clean, prepared, and on time, and you sent me off with smiles and loving goodbyes.
Each of those acts carried something. A prepared meal meant nourishment I could count on. Clean clothes and a packed lunch meant I could walk into a classroom ready to take part. A note meant I was not alone in the day ahead.
You also taught me Scripture and Bible stories. You helped our family through conflict. And you carried the everyday life of a child with serious health challenges, which is work that does not stop when the emergency ends.
As a nurse, I now understand something I could not name as a boy. Much of the care that holds a life together never receives a credential, a paycheck, an award, or public thanks. It happens at home, day after day. Yours did. I want it seen.
🍓 The Garden Beside Our Home
Beside our home there was a garden. We grew peas, strawberries, and other good things there.
When I look back at that garden, I recognize an image that later became central to my work: living things need tending. The peas and strawberries belonged to my childhood long before the Nine Gardens became part of my language for flourishing.
A garden teaches by doing. Food comes from somewhere. Growth takes patience. Plants need daily attention, not one grand effort. A family can tend something together. And what happens at home, in ordinary days, shapes well-being.
You did not set out to teach me a theory of health in that garden. You were simply raising a family. But the picture stayed with me, and today it lives in the imagery of Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™.
🩹 My Shoulder
My life also carries the pain of a shoulder injury involving my brother. I count it as the beginning of a long struggle with instability. Over the years that followed came more than ten dislocations, three surgeries, ongoing pain, and instability that continues today.
This is my own account of my own body. I do not claim that one moment has been medically proven to explain every problem that came after it. I share it because it is part of the vulnerability I bring to my understanding of care.
It deserves to be told honestly. It does not deserve to eclipse this tribute. This page belongs to my mother, and our family’s larger story is more complicated than any one paragraph can hold. My gratitude to her is sincere within that complexity.
✝️ Faith Through Hard Seasons
Mom, through everything our family has faced, I want to honor your love for Jesus and for your family. In the language of my faith, whatever Satan would throw against us, I give thanks for the love, perseverance, and hope that have helped me keep going.
That is my Christian testimony, the way I understand my story spiritually. It is not a medical explanation for asthma or injury, and it is not a judgment that illness comes from too little faith. Faithful people suffer. What faith gave me was not an escape from suffering, but courage, hope, and a love that held through it.
🥷 An Honorary Title
Nina Delores Smith
Our World’s Chief Flourishing Ninja™ of Pediatric Pulmonology
An honorary title bestowed with love by her son, Nathanael Elijah Smith
This is a son’s tribute to the mother who cared for him through a childhood marked by severe asthma. It celebrates what her care means in my life. It is not a medical credential: my mother is not a physician, pulmonologist, nurse, or respiratory therapist. She is my mom, and to the boy who struggled to breathe, that was the title that mattered most.
I am a living testament to the lasting difference your care has made in my life. The child you nurtured became a man who wants to help others flourish.
🦦 Homecoming at the South Jetty, July 9, 2026
On July 9, 2026, in the summer of America’s 250th birthday, you and I stood together at the South Jetty, where the mighty Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. These are some of the most dangerous waters on earth, and that day they were full of life.
Just before our photo, we watched an otter in the water, the first I had ever seen. Then the pelicans came, gliding and diving all around us, more than I had ever seen in my life. To me it was a beautiful picture of God’s joy over a mother and son together again with open hearts.
🎖️ A Scripture Salute to My Mother
Twenty passages from the King James Bible, each quoted exactly, with a son’s reflection after each one.
📜 Open the full Scripture salute (20 passages)
1. Proverbs 22:6 — The Teaching That Stays
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:6 (King James Version)
Mom, this is for the Bible teaching, the values, and the Christian foundation you gave me. It is the verse that started this whole dedication.
2. Proverbs 31:28–29 — A Son Rises to Bless His Mother
“Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.”
Proverbs 31:28–29 (King James Version)
This is the heart of my salute. These pages are one way I am rising up to thank you publicly and to call you blessed.
3. Proverbs 1:8–9 — A Mother’s Instruction Remembered
“My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.”
Proverbs 1:8–9 (King James Version)
Your guidance did not end when I grew up. It still matters to me as a man, a nurse, and a believer.
4. Proverbs 6:20–22 — Instruction Carried Through Life
“My son, keep thy father’s commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.”
Proverbs 6:20–22 (King James Version)
Your teaching has followed me into adult choices, hard days, and grown-up responsibilities. It still speaks when I wake.
5. 2 Timothy 1:5 — Sincere Faith in a Family
“When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.”
2 Timothy 1:5 (King James Version)
Paul saw that Timothy’s faith had come to him through his family. Our story is our own, not a copy of Timothy’s. But I know that sincere faith reached me through you.
6. 2 Timothy 3:14–15 — Knowing the Scriptures From Childhood
“But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
2 Timothy 3:14–15 (King James Version)
I know of whom I learned them. From a child, I knew the Scriptures because you taught them to me.
7. Deuteronomy 6:6–7 — Faith in Ordinary Routines
“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”
Deuteronomy 6:6–7 (King James Version)
Faith in our home was not only for Sundays. It lived in our house, along the way, at bedtime, and in the morning.
8. Isaiah 66:13 — The Comfort of a Mother
“As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”
Isaiah 66:13 (King James Version)
Here God promises comfort to His people, and He chooses a mother’s comfort as the picture. I understand that picture because I was comforted by you.
9. Psalm 46:1 — Refuge in Trouble
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
Psalm 46:1 (King James Version)
Through frightening illness and a body that often felt fragile, this was the faith I carried. God was present in trouble.
10. Psalm 56:3 — Trust Amid Fear
“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.”
Psalm 56:3 (King James Version)
There were times I was afraid, when breathing would not come easily. This verse names what a frightened child, and a frightened adult, can still do: trust.
11. Isaiah 40:31 — Strength Renewed on Eagle’s Wings
“But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
Isaiah 40:31 (King James Version)
Momma Eagle, this one is yours. Wings run all through The EVERgreen Chronicles, and they begin here. May the Lord keep renewing your strength.
12. 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 — Patient, Enduring Love
“Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”
1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (King James Version)
Caring for a child through repeated illness takes patience that does not run out. This is for that patient work. Enduring love never means anyone must stay unsafe; it means love that keeps showing up.
13. Galatians 6:2 — Bearing One Another’s Burdens
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
Galatians 6:2 (King James Version)
When illness or injury makes life hard, people need help carrying the load. You helped carry mine.
14. Galatians 6:9 — Not Weary in Well Doing
“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
Galatians 6:9 (King James Version)
This is for the repeated, daily acts of care whose full harvest only became visible years later, in the man and nurse I became.
15. Hebrews 6:10 — Labour of Love Remembered
“For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.”
Hebrews 6:10 (King James Version)
Much of your work went unseen and unthanked. God has not forgotten it, and neither have I.
16. Romans 12:15 — Sharing Joy and Sorrow
“Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.”
Romans 12:15 (King James Version)
Compassion means being present through changing seasons. You were there in the frightening days and the joyful ones, like our day at the South Jetty.
17. Ephesians 6:2–3 — Honouring My Mother
“Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.”
Ephesians 6:2–3 (King James Version)
This dedication is my way of honoring you. I offer it out of love, not as a bargain for health or long life.
18. Philippians 1:3 — Thankful in Remembrance
“I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,”
Philippians 1:3 (King James Version)
I thank God for you when I remember the past, and I thank Him for you now. This is a living tribute, written while I can still tell you in person.
19. Romans 8:38–39 — Nothing Can Separate Us
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38–39 (King James Version)
No illness, injury, or family hardship can separate us from the love of God. That is the hope you taught me, and it is where I rest.
20. Numbers 6:24–26 — A Blessing for Mom
“The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”
Numbers 6:24–26 (King James Version)
Mom, I speak this blessing over you: protection, grace, peace, and the joy of knowing how deeply you are loved.
🌱 Mom’s Nine Gardens
Flourishing Nursing™ has professional and intellectual foundations, but it also has personal roots. Some of those roots reach into a childhood home where my mother prepared meals, taught Scripture, offered encouragement, and cared for a child whose health was often difficult. Her example helped me understand that care is expressed in the conditions of daily life.
Mom’s Nine Gardens is my name of gratitude for the lessons I began receiving before I knew how to name them. Professional education later helped me examine health through evidence and clinical practice. Looking back, I can also recognize my mother’s influence in the meals, encouragement, Scripture, garden, and daily care that shaped my childhood.
Mom, I am finally giving you credit in writing. Some lessons took your son a little longer to appreciate.
Mom, you were trying to teach me so much of this from the beginning. Apparently, I needed nursing degrees, professional education, and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine before I finally said, “You know, Mom might have been onto something.”
I suspect plenty of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals around the world will recognize that feeling. Sometimes we meet a principle in professional education and suddenly hear an echo of something our mothers tried to teach us years ago. We really ought to give our mothers more credit. Mine certainly deserves hers.
This is my personal reflection, not a scientific claim. My mother’s story explains part of why I care about this work. The evidence for lifestyle medicine stands on its own research, and home wisdom never replaces clinical care.
🥗 1. Nutrition — Mom’s Table and Garden
You planned, cooked, and served meals for our family, and packed my lunches day after day. Our garden grew peas and strawberries beside the house. Feeding a family takes planning and steady daily work. Not every meal of my childhood looked like the way I eat today, and it didn’t need to. What I learned first was that food is care.
🏊 2. Movement — Growing Into Life
With severe asthma, and later my shoulder, movement was never simple for me. Yet every summer you took me to swimming lessons at the Sunset Empire recreation pool, until I became a glorious swimmer. A child with health challenges still needs to take part in life, within what his body allows. You made sure I did.
😴 3. Sleep — Rest Is Part of Care
Children need rest to heal and grow, and so do the people caring for them. Caregivers often give up their own rest without being asked. Mom, this garden honors your need for rest too. You deserve it.
🧘 4. Mindfulness — Attention and Encouragement
The encouraging notes in my lunch bag were a kind of attention. Being noticed and encouraged matters to a child; it tells him he is seen. This is not formal mindfulness training. It is the everyday attention of a mother, and it planted something real.
🤝 5. Relationships — The Work of Loving a Family
You loved us, encouraged us, and worked through family difficulties. Our family story holds real complexity. Gratitude can live alongside that complexity, and mine does.
🎯 6. Purpose — Learning to Care for Others
Before caring became my profession, I experienced care as your child. Your example and your Christian teaching shaped the importance I place on service.
🏘️ 7. Community — Care That Reaches Beyond One Person
Care inside a family does not stay inside it. You grew up serving the Seaside community at Grandpa’s market, and the way we are treated at home shapes how we treat others. What I received from you, I try to pass on.
🌍 8. Global Impact — What a Child Carries Into the World
This garden is my aspiration: to carry the lessons of care into nursing, Kitchen Monk™, Flourishing Nursing™, and service to others, as far as they can reach. It is a hope I am working toward, not a result already measured.
🕊️ 9. Faith & Compassion — The Roots of the Garden
This is where every other garden takes root. You taught me about Jesus Christ, Scripture, love, and perseverance. That is why Proverbs 22:6 opens this dedication, and why a full salute of Scripture is dedicated to you.
🩺 To My Fellow Healthcare Professionals
To my fellow nurses, physicians, and healthcare professionals around the world: perhaps you have had this experience, too. A lesson in a classroom brings back a familiar voice from home. When the guidance was loving and sound, let us remember to thank the person who first tried to teach it to us.
Speaking for myself: I should have listened to my mother sooner.
Mom’s Nine Gardens — tended with love by Nina Delores Smith, gratefully recognized by her son.
🌲 Momma Eagle in The EVERgreen Chronicles™
🦅 Read the story
An imaginative tribute inspired by my life. This passage is allegory, not a factual recollection.
High in the evergreens above the river mouth, there was a nest, and in the nest there was a small eagle who could not always catch his breath.
Some nights the wind pressed hard against his chest, and the air would not come. On those nights the great birds of the coast carried help across the dark water, and the little one held on.
But the help that came most often did not arrive with storm and wings. It came every morning. Momma Eagle brought food to the nest. She smoothed the feathers that the night had ruffled. She tucked a word of courage under his wing before he flew down to the schoolyard of the forest. Beside the nest she tended a small garden, where green shoots climbed and red berries ripened, and she let him help.
Every summer she carried him down to the clear water and stayed while he learned to swim, until the little eagle moved through the water like an otter.
She told him the old stories, the ones about a Shepherd and a Father who runs to meet His children. She told them so many times that the little eagle could not forget them, even when he tried.
The young eagle who struggled for breath grew. His wings were not always strong; one would slip from its place again and again. Yet in time he carried a lamp toward others who were hurting. And whenever he remembered the beginning of that journey, he remembered the mother who tended his early world.
One summer, many years later, he flew home. Momma Eagle was waiting at the edge of the great river, where the water meets the sea. An otter rose to greet them. Then the pelicans came, a whole sky of them, wheeling and diving, as if heaven itself had come to see a mother and her son together again.
The lamp was still burning. It always had been. She lit it first.
✉️ A Letter to Mom
Dear Mom — Nina Delores Smith, my beloved Momma Eagle,
I love you. I want to say that first, plainly, before anything else.
I remember the work you did. I remember the meals on the table and the lunches you packed. I remember the notes tucked inside them, and the encouragement that met me on hard days. I remember the Bible stories and the verses you kept teaching me, even when I was slow to take them in. I remember the garden beside our house, the peas and the strawberries, and every summer you drove me to the pool.
My severe asthma was a major part of our lives. I know it was not only my burden; it was our family’s, and much of it rested on you. I want your care through those years to be seen and acknowledged, not tucked away as “he had asthma.” You were there through all of it.
The nursing degrees came later. Receiving care came first. When I sit with a patient who is frightened or struggling to breathe, I carry some of what I learned by being your son. My work, Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™, holds pieces of you in it.
Our story includes suffering and complexity. I won’t pretend otherwise, and I don’t need to. My gratitude is real inside all of it.
Mom, you have taken care of everyone but yourself your whole life. You deserve to receive care too. You deserve peace, rest, encouragement, and love, the same kind you poured out for so many years. I hope you feel it from me.
I want you to know what you mean to me now, while I can tell you. You are the best mother in the world to me.
Before I carried a lamp for others, you helped light my way. Before I spoke about flourishing, you were tending the life of your child. I love you, Mom. I want these pages to hold something of the gratitude I carry for you.
With love, your son,
Nathanael Elijah Smith
🙏 A Son’s Prayer of Gratitude
My own prayer, not Scripture.
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for my mother, Nina Delores Smith. Thank You for the meals she made, the lunches she packed, the notes she wrote, and the Scripture she taught. Thank You for every ordinary day she cared for a child who could not always breathe.
I do not understand all the reasons for the suffering our family has known. But I thank You that her love did not stop, and that Yours never has.
Lord, give her peace. Give her rest that truly restores. Give her strength for each day and joy that surprises her. Watch over her health and her heart. Let her receive the same patient, faithful love she gave to others for so many years, and let her know, deep down, how loved she is.
Bless the work of her hands, and let the care she planted keep growing in me and in everyone I serve.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
All Scripture on this page is quoted from the King James Version of the Bible. Everything outside the quoted passages is the author’s own words. The honorary title is a son’s affectionate tribute, not a professional credential. The EVERgreen Chronicles passage is imaginative allegory.
