Fighting For My Voice

Chapter 4 is where I stepped in thinking I knew exactly who I was.

Operation Barnabas is a summer ministry for high school juniors and seniors — designed to train students to share their faith, partner with local churches, and grow as Christian leaders. It’s hands-on. It’s long days of ministry, Bible schools, service projects, pouring into communities. It’s about learning how to live your faith out loud.

And I was all in.

It felt like it had my name written on it. A program built to help students transition into a lifestyle of service? That wasn’t just interesting to me — that felt like calling. I’ve never been someone content to sit on the sidelines. If there was a way to serve, to lead, to build something bigger than myself, I wanted to be in the middle of it.

But Chapter 4 wasn’t just about serving.

It was about finding out that sometimes when you step into your calling, not everyone celebrates it.

Somewhere in that summer, I began to realize my voice carried weight — and not everyone was ready for it. My passion, my questions, my intensity… they didn’t always fit neatly into the box people expected. I started to see that being bold in your faith, being unafraid to speak, can make others uncomfortable.

And that left me with a choice.

Do I shrink?
Do I soften what I feel called to say?
Do I make myself smaller so others feel bigger?

Or do I trust that God doesn’t make mistakes when He hands out assignments?

Chapter 4 is the moment I realized the cards I’d been dealt weren’t random. They were refining. And as isolating as it felt at times, deep down I knew — there was no way I was the only one who had ever felt this tension between calling and comfort.

I just had to decide how I was going to carry it.