There’s so much more to me than what meets the eye or that I have room to share.

During the beginning chapters of my life, darkness always seemed to have a grip on me. Somehow, mysteriously hidden in my youth, I’d cracked open a door to the devil that gave him access to my life. I didn’t know the devil was real. That he came with deception aimed to steal everything and everyone I valued. He’s full of lies designed to kill us. His intention is utter destruction. I played right into his hand.

When I’d lost hope, for the first time in my life I decided that God wasn’t real. And if God didn’t exist, there was no reason for me to exist either.

That was the moment. I was sitting alone in a restaurant, hundreds of miles from home and a stranger started to talk to me. For the next few days, I experienced the God I’d believed in, but in a way that I’d never imagined was possible.

He said, “This is what I AM going to do to you. Clean out all the old within and make you whole and new and pure again.”

I had no idea what He meant. When was I ever whole? Pure? Was God talking to the right girl?

Years of being battered and bruised left me with a damaging lack of self-worth and poor decision-making skills. But God changed my outlook and my course.

Whole is what God promised, and whole is what God made good on. He taught me about life in His kingdom. He gave me His definition of whole and taught me how to always live from a place of victory.

I learned that the devil is an unseen evil that runs roughshod over those who are ignorant of God’s Truth. It was that darkness that once held me his captive. But not anymore.