Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

I do not feel qualified for this

Some people walk into their calling with a crown already in place. I stumbled into mine, dragging a backpack full of broken dreams and bad habits. I do not feel qualified for this. I need you to understand that before anything else gets written. I swear like a dockworker on double overtime. I lose my temper. I have doubted, wandered, slammed doors that only grace re-opened. I am not the picture of a polished saint. If anything, I am the after-picture of someone God must have laughed at when He said, “Yep. That one.”

And now, somehow, I am writing a devotional. When I first felt that nudge, it felt absolutely ridiculous. Like trying to build a cathedral out of toothpicks. Me? Write devotionals? I laughed out loud. I laughed so hard I knocked my head on the chair rail with a loud thud that rattled the picture frames. I sat there, hand on the back of my head, half-laughing, half-wincing, wondering if God was laughing too or just waiting patiently for me.

I hear this voice inside that says, Who do you think you are? You are not a pastor. You are not holy enough. You are not the safe, sanitized version of someone who writes devotionals. You are rough around the edges, like sandpaper that forgot it was meant to smooth things out. You have receipts; long, crumpled trails of all the ways you have been messy, and stubborn.

I am not the polished kind of called. I am the bruised, bleeding, laughing-too-hard-to-quit kind of called.

I did not volunteer for this assignment

I did not campaign for this assignment. I did not hustle my way into a role where anyone would expect me to talk about faith in this way. Honestly? I was just trying to hold my life together. If anything, writing had become something I used to do, a dream I folded up and tucked away under more practical realities. Bills needed to be paid. Life needed to be lived. Dreams were expensive. So I stopped picking up the “pen”. Until one day, it picked me back up. It felt like both a gut-punch and a gasp of relief, the kind of moment that terrifies you because it wakes up something you did not realize was still alive.

In late January, after one of those raw, slightly-sassy prayers where you simultaneously love God and throw your hands up at Him in frustration, I asked Him for something. I was not gentle about it. I did not whisper. I practically stormed heaven’s gates with a demand. I said, “Tell me what you want from me. Give me something to do that is not just busy work. Use me for something that matters or leave me hell alone because this half-living shit is killing me.“

It was not pretty. But it was honest. And somewhere in the silence that followed, something stirred. Not an audible voice. Not a flashing neon sign. Just a tap on my shoulder, so faint at first I almost missed it. Write. Shortly afterwards, it was not a suggestion. It was not a gentle nudge. It hit like a command from the deepest part of the universe, sudden and undeniable, leaving me stunned at the weight of being trusted with something I did not feel ready to carry.

I was not hunting purpose. I was trying to survive it.

When the call will not leave you alone

At first, I ignored it. I shook it off. I told myself I was imagining it. But the tap came again. And again. And again. Until it became impossible to sit still without feeling it. Until words started pouring out of me faster than I could catch them. I have not been able to stop writing since.

I need to be writing something all the time now. It is as if God rewired me from the inside out, lit a fuse I cannot extinguish, and said, Good. Now burn. And yet, even with this fire burning, even with the words coming in waves, I still find myself second-guessing. I still hear the old voice creep in and whisper, You are not worthy of this.

Willingness over worthiness

I am learning to answer it differently now. Maybe I am not worthy. But maybe God never asked me to be. Maybe He just asked me to be willing. Maybe He wanted someone stubborn enough to wrestle with Him in prayer and still show up the next morning ready to work. Maybe He wanted someone who would not pretend to have it all figured out. Maybe He picked someone who would tell the truth about the mess and the mercy, because the world does not need another polished performance. It needs the real thing.

I do not have a perfect testimony. I have a living one. I still cuss sometimes. I just lied. Oh my gosh I just broke another commandment and it’s only nine in the freaking morning!

It’s not sometimes its all the time. Some days it is “Dear God.” Some days it is “What the actual **ck, God?

Or like when I spill coffee on my laptop mid-sentence or when I get cut off in traffic five minutes after leaving church. I mean they don’t know how to use their **cking blinkers. 

I still wrestle; like when I sit at my desk, hands trembling over the keyboard, asking God why He chose someone who feels this unsure to carry a message that feels this important. But I also still say yes. He did not wait for me to be “ready.” He met me exactly where I was and said…Write anyway.

So here I am. Not worthy, polished, or perfect. Just willing. And if that is enough for God? It will be enough for me too.

I am unqualified by every standard they measure. But calling does not check your references.