Rev. Franklin Graham has nothing but fond memories of his mother Ruth, and he looks back at her strict discipline methods with great fondness.
When he was just a young boy, Graham thought that smoking looked "so cool." Men who worked on their house always smoked during their breaks, and Graham wanted to be like them.
"I'd go around and pick up the cigarette butts they had thrown down and light them up," he recalls on his Facebook page. When his mother caught him in the act, she was nothing short of horrified.
"My mother...thought she would put an end to that. She asked one of the workmen to buy her a whole pack of cigarettes. She sat me down in front of the fireplace and had me smoke them in the hopes that I would never touch cigarettes again," says Graham. "It didn't take long until I had to go and throw up—but I was stubborn, so I came back for more!"
Graham admits that his mother was right to teach him a lesson about that "unhealthy habit." He wished he had listened to her, but it was only when he turned 22 years old before "the Lord delivered me from the addiction of nicotine."
Graham was tempted by his peers to engage in other bad habits, but his mother advised him, "If bad boys try to get you to do bad things—say no!" Because of the wisdom behind his mother's advice, Graham and his wife Jane Austin taught their children the same thing.
Graham says his mother taught him so many things, but by far the most important lesson his parents imparted on him was how to love and follow Jesus Christ. "She and my father Billy Graham taught me that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ was the most important thing in life," he says.
