How many job applications have you filled out that have a space for you to list your qualifications? How many cover letters have you sent with your résumé in which you’ve tried to tailor it to highlight how you’re specifically qualified for the position you want? What do you list? Education? Past work experience? Life experience? Have you ever had the experience of applying for a job that was perfect for you—your abilities and qualifications lined up perfectly with the job description—only to be told that someone else more qualified was hired instead?

There’s a book I’ll pick up from time to time when I need a spiritually creative boost: Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. It’s a book that I bought for an undergraduate Creative Writing course ten years ago and promptly set aside with all of my other writing-related books. So nice to look at on a shelf, but not usually of much use.

But when I do pick it up and begin reading it, it’s hard to put down, whether I’m looking for a specific quote to use here on the blog or in a critique/contest feedback. No matter what I pick it up for, whatever I’ve read has spoken to me on a deep intellectual and spiritual level. Such as this, from the chapter “Healed, Whole and Holy”:

We are all asked to do more than we can do. Every hero and heroine of the Bible does more than he would have thought it possible to do, from Gideon to Esther to Mary. Jacob, one of my favorite characters, certainly wasn’t qualified. He was a liar and a cheat; and yet he was given the extraordinary vision of angels and archangels ascending and descending a ladder which reached from earth to heaven. . . .

Moses was past middle age when God called him to lead His children out of Egypt, and he spoke with a stutter. He was reluctant and unwilling and he couldn’t control his temper. . . .

In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do His work, to bear His glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there’s no danger that we will confuse God’s work with our own, or God’s glory with our own.

Could Beethoven have written that glorious paean of praise in the Ninth Symphony if he had not had to endure the dark closing in of deafness? . . . Could Milton have seen all that he sees in Paradise Lost if he had not been blind?

When we are “qualified” to do something, that means we can do it with no outside help. When we complete a task, we feel we have done it under our own power and are proud of the accomplishment. But it doesn’t push us beyond our boundaries, to move outside of our comfort zones, to grow. We are called to do works we aren’t naturally equipped to do, not to so we will fail, but so that we will turn to a source other than our own strengths, abilities, and knowledge, to be reminded that we are but a small part of a larger world—and that we need the resources of that larger world to help us achieve our calling.

This is especially true when it comes to writing. A writer doesn’t sit down with pen and paper or at the computer and immediately, on the first try, write a perfect, publication-ready manuscript—not even the best storytellers in the world. Even those renowned authors like Tom Clancy and John Grisham who sold their “first” manuscripts had to struggle to sell them and then had to go through major editing processes to get the novels ready for others to read. (And I would imagine they rewrote those “first” manuscripts several times before submitting them in the first place.) They needed the help of professionals to make them the best selling authors they are today. Alone, they weren’t “qualified.”

Writing is an ongoing learning process. No one comes to writing “pre-qualified” to do it. Sure, we can always write for our own edification and the amusement of family and friends. But even if writers have no desire to be published, they will find themselves continually practicing the skill of writing and seeking out knowledge from others on the craft of writing.

As a child, I was so far from feeling qualified to write I tried to hide the fact I did it from everyone. In my first Creative Writing class, my senior year of high school, I received encouragement from my teacher such that I thought it might be something I could parlay into a career—if I learned enough about it. So I majored in Creative Writing in college. Because I didn’t go into it with the understanding that most college Creative Writing programs expect literary-style writing, I dropped out of college after three years, writing prolifically (for my own mental health) but feeling even less qualified to do it.

It wasn’t until 2001 when I attended my first Christian writing conference (Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers’ Conference) when I realized I didn’t have to be qualified, I just had to be obedient to the calling to be a writer, then seek out the training I needed to do become more proficient.

Now, four years after receiving a Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction, with six books out and three still to come out, do I feel like I am qualified to call myself a good writer? I have a certain skill-set that makes me a good “emerging author.” I have a Christy Award–nominee medal hanging on my wall beside my diplomas and master’s hood. I have requests from publishers for proposals for new series. But are those really qualifications to be a good writer?

If I were to have written about this three weeks ago, right after I finished the manuscript of Ransome’s Quest, my answer would have been a resounding NO. Now, having received an e-mail from my editor in which she told me (twice) that she loved the story (with several large items of revision detailed between those two affirmations), I’m reminded that on my own, no, I’m not qualified to do this. I still need to grow. I still need to improve my craft and my storytelling. I need to be exposed to new ideas and differing viewpoints. I need to be told that what I’ve written isn’t good enough. But because I’m not on my own in this process—I have a wonderful agent, Chip MacGregor, and fantastic editors at both publishing houses, along with the world’s best Beta Readers as my support team—I appear qualified to the outside world.

May I never become someone who begins to believe in my own “qualifications” as a writer! Because then, I truly would NOT be qualified to continue to do what I do!

What are you qualified to do? What have you been called to do for which you don’t feel qualified? Are you pursuing that seemingly unattainable calling, or are you letting the feelings of inadequacy keep you from doing what you know you’re being called to do?