This is a story I’ve been trying to talk about for months. But every time I think about it, my mind goes to a very dark place. I don’t want to repeat that period in my life.

Here’s the thing I’ve found though — talking about my experience is a way to control it. I don’t want the fear of this moment to continue in my life.

When I first became a Christian, I felt worthless. I grew up in a home in which my parents had great faith in who I was and what I could do, but at the same time I knew, because I was told, that I didn’t deserve to be happy. I deserved eternal pain. And every day that I lived without feeling that pain I was filled with guilt that transformed into overwhelming gratitude to a God who graciously granted me every breath.

My life wasn’t mine; it was God’s, and I was apologetically grateful to Him for it. When I made my formal decision to commit to Christ, it felt like the biggest, most momentous decision I’ve ever made. Tears, smiles, clean worthiness, and this deep yearning to know who I owed “thank you” to for my every breath.

So, to get to know this God, I prayed for hours. I memorized hundreds of verses. I couldn’t get enough of Christian music. I did Bible Bowls, and won seven of the ten I attended (second place once, fifth twice). I was going to be a Pastor.

I wonder now, sometimes, why it took me so long to see I was wrong. It wasn’t like I passively believed any of it. To defend and enrich my faith I read apologetics, and to save others I argued with people who disagreed with me at almost every opportunity. With how much I was digging into Christianity, why didn’t I leave?

I’ve had a lot of time to think about the answer to this question. I think part of it is that Christianity was honed to be my focus. My parents were afraid that the world “out there” would make me stray from Christianity if I were exposed to it too early. So I grew up in an environment in which the Bible was strongly encouraged, because my parents didn’t want me to go to hell. They homeschooled me to reinforce it; I never set foot in a classroom until I was 17.

And part of it was that I believed the Devil existed — he was a real force embodying every evil and deceptive force in the book to cruelly drown me in hell’s torment.

While the Devil was trying to destroy me, God was warm and protective, and He cared. I just had to trust Him, and learn how to trust Him more. I could doubt, but doubt was there to increase my faith, challenge it, and make it stronger.

I was only safe from Satan while I was on God’s side, so I was fighting hard against Satan because he represented everything I was told was evil in the world because it was supposedly destroying the eternal lives of a world I loved. That viewpoint can give you razor-sharp focus — tunnel vision that made me determined to believe every fantastic story and promise and threat in the Bible.

Satan was dangerous for other people, too, and I when I was a teenager I thought that Christ was their only hope, so I decided to be a preacher.

But when I started going to college, I noticed that preachers spoke to the choir, most of the time — and the secular humanities professors were dangerously pulling people away from the faith. I’m not sure it really occurred to me that they might be right. I was bewildered and frightened by the thought that these people were ripping people from eternity in paradise to one of eternal torment. So decided to leave the choir and enter into the opposing lines and become a university professor at a secular university, instead.

I fought for Christianity every step of the way — while I got my Bachelor’s in English at a state school and then through my Master’s in English at a state school. All this time in a secular environment was challenging me and my faith, so I decided to go to a respected Christian university for my Ph.D. program in English (which I’m still in). The Christian university was more liberal than I had anticipated…

I want to reiterate that my dedication to Christianity had been strengthening through the years. Yeah, I struggled intellectually — but emotionally and foundationally I still deeply loved God and was warring against the Devil to save people from hell.

The more I learned, the more I felt that a laughing Satan was determined to bore into my skull.