Thoughts From A Dusty Road: by Dusty Wells (June 2023)

Hello friends!  I am absolutely thrilled and so excited that I have been asked to share my heart and thoughts each month with writing an article for ABSOLUTELY GOSPEL.  I love Bev, Tamra, Chris, and the entire team there, so I jumped at it…so here goes my first one and just a little of my heart today.

People have asked me for years if I’m always “the encouraging, nice, complimentary, tell people what they want to hear guy”.  And my answer is always the same, No, not always. BUT I sure do try to find the good in people.  I try to find their best attributes, their gifts, their callings, their creativity and dwell on those and not point out the bad, unless absolutely necessary…and even then, I use Godly prayerful wisdom.

Friends, I truly believe our “words and actions”, they speak life or death in all that we do and speak.  We have the power of life and death in our tongue.  The Word of God declares in 1st Thessalonians 5:11, “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up…”  I really do strive daily to live that out.  Now let me assure you and you can ask anyone who works closely with me or knows me well (and yes, maybe even some of you, who are reading this, know it to be true), it does not always go that way with me…I fail miserably at times, and I can be a real grump, grouchy, and an overly moody sensitive guy.  Yup, I sure can.   I can see a few of you grinning at me right now and nodding in agreement.

I learned years ago firsthand the power of our words and how they can affect us.  Words and actions affected me, and I assure you it has taken me years to heal from the hurt, pain, and junk of thinking about them at times.

A couple of examples…I was a 7^th grader just entering Jr High School, I didn’t have a dad, I wasn’t the most athletic and I was really insecure in who I was, and one day in gym class the coach Mr. Ingram had all of us guys running laps, doing push-ups, burpees, etc…he stopped the class,  asked me to step forward and said, ok guys, let me show you what not to do in this class, “Dusty-twinkle toe Wells, show us what we are not supposed to do, since you can’t get it right”…well needless to say, right there and right then, I knew I would never be one of the guys who was into sports and such.  I was humiliated and felt like the biggest loser of all when it came to athletics.  Yeah, it took years for those words to be thrown out of the door of my memory…

Another time, I was 18 years old, and we had a powerful service at a revival at church, and I truly felt like God was speaking to me and calling me into some kind of ministry…I knew that He wanted me to share my incredible story of His redeeming love, how He found me in the deepest darkest pit of life, and how Christian music had become a powerful tool in my own life.  I wasn’t sure what all it meant, but I knew I was supposed to share my testimony, share music and encourage others with what I myself had been encouraged with…I told a precious lady whom I looked up to with the highest regard, and I will never forget her words that she spoke, “Oh, Brother Dusty, you need to just keep your testimony to yourself…you are not the type who can speak or help others with sharing where you’ve been.  You still have a lot to work on.  You need to just keep working at Sears and focus on that.”  I walked away from the service that eve, defeated and discouraged.  Thank goodness, God in all of His greatness began to use other people to speak life into me and here I am 44 years later, still doing what God called me to do many years ago.

The power of our words and actions. And how they affect us all.

Several years ago, after a Gaither videotaping, I was sitting at lunch with Bill and Gloria, Dottie Rambo, and Vestal Goodman.  Dottie was always encouraging me to share my testimony and so I shared it with them.  I finished sharing my heart, and yes, I am the biggest “crybaby”, and so I was wiping my eyes after being reminded by Him of how far I had come and where He had picked me up from, and precious Gloria reached over to me with a napkin and dried the tears and I will never ever forget her “words of life”, she said,  “Dusty you are a gift and a protector of the gift that these artists have all been so graciously entrusted with.  You know the power of the gift of music and what it can do for others.  Your calling is a gift and a gift that we artists and writers need’.    Even as I type that I can still hear her words and the tone she spoke with.  She was breathing life into me with her words.  I still take it very seriously and I know I am called to the Christian music industry.

We have the power of life and death in our tongues.

So dear ones, that is why I choose to speak life over each one of you with encouragement. Each one of you are a gift yourselves to so many with your own life…your songs, your music, your stories, your life, your hearts…the call that rests upon you. You are a gift that I know God has called me to help nurture, walk with, protect, challenge, listen to, be there for, and help others see how valuable the gift is.  You have something to share that this world so desperately needs to hear.   ALL OF YOU!   I need to hear it daily.

I know we are all in crazy times still, but I am so grateful to be on the journey alongside each of you and cannot wait to keep sharing and writing my heart for you.

Let’s keep speaking words of life over one another and remember that we all are in this together. I am thankful you are “gifts” to me.

You are loved, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.

Dusty