I knew what He was asking me to do.
That was the problem.
If I hadn't understood it — if the calling had been vague or ambiguous or easy to misread — I could have kept moving. Kept my head down. Kept doing what I was doing with the people already in my circle and called it enough.
But it wasn't vague. It was specific. Build this. Name it. Put it out. Say it out loud where anyone can hear it.
And everything in me wanted to find a reason why that couldn't be me.
I had the diagnosis. Primary Progressive Aphasia — a disease that takes language. Progressively, irreversibly, takes the very thing you'd need to build a ministry around music and words and weekly drops and curriculum and community. The cruel irony of it wasn't lost on me. God was asking me to raise my voice at the exact moment my voice had an expiration date on it.
I had no platform. No formal training. No ministry credentials. No database of followers waiting for me to launch something. I was not the obvious choice. I was not anyone's first pick for this assignment.
And I was angry.
Not at God. Let me be clear about that. Angry at the gap — the impossible distance between what I was being asked to do and what I had to do it with. Angry that the calling didn't come with the resources. Angry that yes felt so unreasonable.
But here's what I kept coming back to.
The calling didn't ask for my qualifications. It asked for my obedience.
And underneath the anger, underneath the inventory of everything I lacked, there was something I couldn't shake. Something that had been placed in me that I did not put there myself. A fire. A compulsion. A song that refused to stay quiet no matter how many reasons I gave it to stop.
I know now that's what a calling feels like from the inside. It doesn't feel like confidence. It doesn't feel like readiness. It feels like something in your bones that won't let you sleep, won't let you settle, won't let you convince yourself that silence is an option.
So I said yes.
Not because I was ready. Not because the circumstances made sense. Not because anyone told me I was qualified. I said yes because the fire in my bones was louder than the fear in my head. Because the thing God placed in me refused to stay contained. Because at some point the cost of staying quiet became higher than the cost of opening my mouth.
The JDOT Five exists because I stopped waiting to be ready and started doing the thing I was asked to do.
And what I've learned — what I'm still learning — is that the moment you open your mouth, something happens. Not because of who you are. Not because of what you have. But because of the name you're carrying when you speak.
The silence was never yours to keep.
It is over.
PROCLAMATION. THE SILENCE IS OVER. Jeremiah 20:9
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