The Epistles of Fayetteville:3

The Third Epistle of Fayetteville

Two lessons found me before sunrise—both reminding me how quick the tongue can damn and how slow the heart is to see. Fayetteville remains my teacher.

Hey Beloved,

I’m feeling a bit worn at the edges. Kinda like one of those old, threadbare rugs we used to hang over the trailer railing and beat until the dust fled into the wind. Perhaps aging is similar—how I used to punish those poor braided floor coverings. Today was another one of those days where I saw my failure, not once, but twice.

I’ll break it down for the friends who will read this later.

The first failure came around 5:30 a.m. with my first Lyft ride. It was actually a decent fare, and as I pulled into the local Publix plaza for the pickup, I first noticed them. Two younger folks—maybe early twenties? Hard to tell in the dim parking lot, the lights still humming to life.

Their posture caught my eye first: rigid, defensive. Even through my closed windows, I could hear raised voices. They were yelling—quietly furious as they got in the car. Neither spoke after that, and I could almost feel the frost between them, cold and heavy as silence.

I admit I judged them harshly at first. My first craven thought was how they smelled—unwashed flesh and unlaundered clothes. It disgusted me. My metaphorical feathers were up, ready to condemn. The argument, the smell, the disarray—it all added nails to the coffin of my prejudice.

I am dust, Father—useless without You, yet somehow You breathe through me.

Forgive me, and thank You for stilling my tongue long enough to speak kindness instead of cruelty.

“How’s your morning going?” I offered into the tense air. I know it wasn’t my own compassion that stirred that question. Perhaps it was Your hand again, moving me toward my highest.

The gentleman in the backseat answered, and in a rush I learned their story. I won’t betray details meant only for Heaven’s scrolls, but this much I’ll share: they were homeless. They’d missed their window at the facility that lets them wash clothes before closing. They were on their way to a job orientation, arguing because one of them smelled “a bit ginger.”

Right there, my heart cracked open.

If I had spoken my first thought, I would have damned myself by damning them. I see now how sharp a tongue can be when not bridled. “Judge not, lest you be judged. For with the same measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

What kind of fool am I, that my instinct would be judgment instead of mercy?

The second failure came later, in the Walmart parking lot near my house. I’d been driving for hours. At the exit sat a man whose face was collapsed inward—broken once, healed wrong, like a hammer had come down and somehow he’d lived.

Oh Beloved, forgive me. I cringed. My stomach turned. What kind of piece of filth am I that I couldn’t bear to see his suffering because it made me uncomfortable? He has to live like that.

But this time, I caught it. I didn’t look away. I didn’t take a different exit like my cowardice whispered. I looked, I prayed, I learned—and I know I’ll still fail again.

Why You continue to pour so much of Your precious love into me is a mystery. I keep showing up as cracked pottery, and You keep showing out as glory.

So I pray now—for Fayetteville.

For the wounded, that You heal them.

For the homeless, that You home them.

For all of us, that You keep sanding down the rough edges until only grace remains.

As always, Beloved,

Dust