This morning in Deweyville, the air was crisp and the sun was just beginning to climb over the horizon. I was filling my patrol car at the local gas station when a man approached me. There was a quiet urgency in his steps, a kind of desperation that didn’t demand attention but silently pleaded for understanding. He looked tired, not just from lack of sleep, but from the weight of life itself pressing down on his shoulders.

With a hesitant voice, he asked me something simple yet heart-wrenching: “Is it time to go home?” I had to tell him no. There was no home waiting for him—at least not in the traditional sense. He had lost everything for the second time. His house was gone. His belongings scattered or sold off. Now he was living in his truck, doing his best to survive in a world that had already demanded too much from him.

But even in that despair, he wasn’t asking for money. He wasn’t asking for handouts or pity. What he wanted was the chance to provide for himself, to earn a living, to stand on his own two feet again. He was a welder, skilled and proud, carrying his own tools with him wherever he went. His determination shone through the dust and fatigue—a quiet refusal to let life’s hardships strip him of dignity.

One of my fellow officers, witnessing the moment, raised a phone and captured a photo of us praying together at the gas pump. Our heads bowed, hands clasped, the image frozen in time, I realized something profound. We can’t always rebuild someone’s home or undo the losses they’ve endured. We can’t always solve every hardship. But we can stand beside one another. We can offer faith, compassion, and the reminder that no one has to face life’s storms alone.

The man admitted that his faith was being tested. Life had challenged him repeatedly, yet he had not given up entirely. Standing there, praying beside him, I felt the weight of that trust. Not in me, but in something larger, something that had carried him this far and could carry him further still.

So I ask this: keep him, and others like him, in your prayers. Keep them in your thoughts. Offer kindness when you can, patience when it is needed, and faith when despair threatens to take hold. Sometimes, the most meaningful acts are not ones that rebuild walls or replace what has been lost, but those that remind someone that hope is not yet gone, and that they are not alone.

Even at a small gas station in Deweyville, under the early morning sky, that simple act of standing together, of praying together, was a reminder of the enduring power of humanity.