“At the beginning of the year, I started coming to Destiny Church’s women’s Bible study, and through that, I was introduced to Keys to Freedom. I wasn’t exactly sure what this class was or what it was going to entail, but I knew God was telling me I needed to be a part of it. I came into this class three months after I got baptized and even though I had been transformed and given my life to Christ, I still wasn’t walking in full freedom from my past. I was still full of brokenness and insecurities which stemmed from my childhood and the choices I had made going into adulthood.

I come from a very dysfunctional family. Church was never introduced as a child, and the only things I “knew” about Jesus was what I would hear from my grandma. I was raised by my mother and stepfather until age four when my biological father came into my life. My mother’s marriage to my stepfather exposed my siblings and I to many things as children – poverty, drugs, violence, and abuse (mental, physical, and sexual).

At age fourteen, my biological father walked out of my life in pursuit of a life of “no regrets,” which ultimately just meant a life where he wouldn’t be held accountable or feel guilty for the drugs he was choosing over being my father. At the time, he was the only “good” thing I felt I had in my life because of all the struggles I faced at my mom’s house with her abusive husband (which I kept secret from my father). My father’s absence sent me into a downward spiral of feeling abandoned and alone. I was consumed by the insecurity of not being good enough, not even for my dad to want to be in my life.

In my search for validation, I found myself living a life I promised I would never live. I was enticed by a community that promised peace, love, unity and respect – “everything” I had been searching for. It wasn’t too long after I fell into that raving scene that I realized it was all deception and lies. You cannot seek fulfillment of God’s promises from the world. However, I went to every event with the intention of escaping from reality because that was the only way to make some sense of my life. It was nothing but a “quick fix” to get you by until the next event where you would do it all over again. I was chasing empty promises hoping I would find them in the next festival. I had already given so much of myself to the lifestyle of drinking, drugs and promiscuity when I realized I was trapped in a never-ending cycle. I was at a point where I had fully turned from anything I thought I “knew” about God and was living a life that dishonored and disobeyed Him with every decision I made.

This is the baggage I walked into Keys to Freedom with. My head was still full of the lies I so graciously accepted from the enemy all those years. I still looked at myself as a victim of my childhood. I truly believed that even though God had transformed my life and I had surrendered and walked away from everything in my past, I would still never be good enough or deserving of the abundant life God has for me. It was in Keys to Freedom that I learned to renew my mind with God’s Truth. To take all the lies I had believed from the enemy and replace them with what God says about me. God says I am chosen, I am worthy, I am enough and, most importantly, that He promises to NEVER leave me nor forsake me. When I started learning the truth about what God says about me, I was overwhelmed with how good He is. It gave me this untouchable confidence knowing there is nothing I could have said or done that changed His love for me; there still isn’t. Through God’s truth and with the help, love and support of the women in Keys to Freedom, I can finally say, “I accept God’s love and I am FREE!”