I’m five years old. Our telephone, a yellow rotary dial with a long spiraling cord that I can almost touch from the floor, hangs from the wall, just out of my reach, without assistance. Dad stands behind me, keeping me from falling as I stand still on the barstool, giving me just enough height to reach the rotary dial. He reads me Grandma’s seven-digit number off a Rolodex card, slow enough for me to remember each one.

I lift my finger, my hand shaking. Excitement or fear? I’m not sure. My tiny finger barely has the strength to rotate the dial, not without Dad’s help. I turn the dial to the silver stop and let it go, surprised and amazed by the recoil.

It’s just like my See ‘n Say!

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. Each click is a switch closing somewhere across town, connecting one wire to the next, building a pathway from our wall to grandma’s house. I cannot see how it works. All I know is the sound it makes and the way my stomach drops with every number.

Seven digits.

Seven small terrors.

Dad’s hand rests on my shoulder. He does not dial the numbers for me. He lets me do the scary thing, with him standing nearby. The line rings. Someone picks up. It’s Grandma! I say the words I practiced with Dad. The voice on the other end? It says them back. I hang up the receiver and look at my father. He smiles. I did it. I made my first phone call.

That was one of the times I learned what fear feels like. The moment when you walk into it, instead of running away in panic. Dial spinning. Switches clicking. Then I heard a familiar voice. Grandma Doris. I survived. I lived despite my fears. And my tiny world? It got just a little bigger that day. With the right combination of ten digits, or seven if it was a local call, I could reach out and touch someone. Anyone. Anywhere. Well, at least anywhere with a phone.

Today, I dial scary numbers almost daily. New potential career opportunities. A marriage and a relationship I really want to make work. Difficult decisions affecting not only my life, but my family’s. Even my fear of never being quite good enough. I’m still afraid that my storytelling skills are a joke, and none of my combinations of words will impact anyone, including me.

Every single fear and apprehension is one of those small round holes on the yellow rotary dial telephone, a five-year-old’s finger doing his best to turn it, letting it click back through all those magnetic and electric switches I cannot see. Then the ring on the other end? That’s exhilarating. Each of those fears melts away at that point, becoming familiar and recognizing them for what they are: nothing to be scared of. The phone is still going to ring. Someone will pick up. Or not. But the voice comes through on the other side? It’s a calm, loving voice. Most of the time. And I’m still standing on a bar stool, holding the receiver to my ear, waiting to find out if anyone picks up.

Bad writing? I know exactly what that feels like. It’s emotionless, feeling like less than nothing. You read it back, and the words lay there, flat and dutiful. Doing their job. And nothing more.

Bad writing does not scare me.

Good writing? That scares me to death.

Writing well means I got close, near enough to feel something real. It means I hit at least one nerve, maybe two. It means every sentence did what it needed to. And I let someone read it (the scary part), and now? Now I wait.

The fear is not failure. The fear is that it’s good, but not good enough. Not good enough for Image Journal. Not good enough for The Sun. Sure, it’s good enough to feel true when I wrote it. But not good enough to matter to a universal audience.

That’s a fear I’m very familiar with. I sit with it and know exactly what it is. It is the fear that the story will survive without meaning. The dial spins. The switches click. The call goes through. But no one is home. Someone reads it, files it under inspiring, sad, or well-written, and moves on. The thing I bled onto the page? It’s a footnote tucked away in someone else’s memory.

That fear has a root.

The work? It’s mine. It relies on me to complete it. No one else.

Then I remember the most important part of all of this: I am not enough. I was never enough.

Without Jesus, I do not write through grief. I do not recognize Alissa across a room and know she is the woman I am supposed to marry. I do not sit down at a keyboard and tell the truth about the years that nearly broke me. I do not pick up a five-year-old’s courage and dial the next scary number.

With him, I do all of it. Not because I am brave. Because he is faithful.

The dial spins. Again. The switches click. Again. The voice answers. It’s Jesus.

I am still that boy on the bar stool, finger in the hole, pulling the number around to the silver stop. Dad stands behind me, holding me steady. He does not dial it for me. He lets me do the scary thing while he stands close.

I fight that fear every single day.

Jesus is why I keep dialing. He’s why it matters.

It’s the only reason any of this gets written!