December 10 2019
Dustin’s Obituary An Extraordinary Complicated Life Dustin Wade Smith Your birth stirred joy and met needs from the very start. As a baby you taught deep love to your young mother and gave me a purpose in life. You taught your father patience and endurance. You were the apple of your grandfather’s eye and you showed your grandmother that life can start again. In your young life, you inspired others to see the wonder through your eyes of a world full of common things. Your teen years showed me that growing boys and young men face hard things in life. They influence and are influenced by peers in both good and bad choices. Sometimes you have to watch the people you love go through tough times and that love doesn’t fix everything. Your young adult years were filled with struggles that grew more fierce as time went on. You fought battles every day that no one else could see but the effects were very visible. You took your sons to church. When you couldn’t be the father that God designed, you made sure your sons were in an environment rich in God’s teaching and love. You made an effort to make sure they knew God. As time went on another woman came into your life. You taught Jackie that love was both hard and amazing at the same time. Love allows forgiveness when the circumstances seem impossible. You took her and her boys, Dalton and Logan to church and showed them that worship is about a relationship with Jesus and not just a list of rules and regulations. Devotions and bible reading became part of everyday life. You taught them to pray and be thankful for the food God provided on your table. Though you were struggling, you tried hard to keep reaching out to God and showing others how to do the same. There are countless people in the world that were influenced by your life and your struggles. You tried to show that God has great mercy and amazing grace. His power is strong enough to change lives even from a jail cell while you were leading bible studies or a drug infested hotel room when you told the woman two doors down that you were a believer in Christ. Your life showed that you were trying to share God even when you were not capable of living it yourself. There are even more people who prayed for you daily and leaned into God all the more for understanding because of you. Pictures hang on walls that you painted and show your gift of artistry. A beautiful singing voice to praise God’s name with. The gift to play lovely Christian music on a guitar to soothe troubled souls. Those times are precious to the hearts of those who love you and through the words in your music gave us a closer look at God. Houses and buildings are standing today because God gave you the gift of working with yours hands. I always had Proverbs 22:6 open in a bible in the front room. God says, train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. I waited for years and prayed about that promise. Finally in your passing, I see that God kept His promise all along. All through your life there is evidence of God’s influence and your life bore fruit to others of that influence even in your struggles. I see God everywhere in your life. He never left you. He was showing mercy, grace and love to you and through you. You were here on this earth and your life meant something. It’s not about dates of birth or length of years but the lives you touched along the way. This is the story of your life that should be remembered. Isaiah 42:3 He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle. He will bring justice to all who have been wronged. NLT I love you, Mom Read More
Our most sincere sympathies to the family and friends of Dustin Wade Smith December 10 2019.
Death notice for the town of: Suffolk, state: Virginia