I stand on a street corner in the middle of downtown Chicago in the summertime. My nerves are starting to show. I scroll on my phone and take in a few deep breaths.

I don’t exactly blend in with the crowd in my flowing white dress, feather earrings and wavy red hair, and I pique the curiosity of a few passersby who shoot me puzzled looks. Finally, a tall blond man in a business suit approaches me and gives me a hug.

“Hi, you must be Lady Viviane,” he says with a slight Dutch accent. “Let’s go in.” He motions to the large glass door of the restaurant behind us.

He leads me through the restaurant, and we settle into a discreet booth that gives us just enough privacy to enter another world — the world of Lady Viviane.

“This is really nice,” I say, flashing a smile across the table. That nervous girl outside is now gone. We proceed to have a lovely conversation about spirituality, sexuality and the forces of the universe. He gives me a foot massage under the table, showering me with compliments while we eat our crab cakes.

My new friend then kindly asks me if I would mind giving him some of my “holy water.” I nod and take my wine glass to the bathroom. Peeing in a wine glass over a toilet in an upscale restaurant in Chicago is not the easiest thing to do or to hide. But as I glide back through the restaurant holding my wine glass full of golden nectar, it just looks like white wine to the average onlooker.

I set it on the table. He drinks it and sighs, saying it’s delicious. He wraps a $400 cash offering in a cloth napkin, slips it across the table and says how grateful he is to have had the honor of serving me.

By now, you may have figured out that I’m a professional dominatrix, or rather, Lady Viviane is.

A dominatrix typically dominates her partner psychologically and physically, helping them explore various erotic desires. But Lady Viviane does much more than that. She’s a teacher who calls on her disciples to learn the vast secrets of the universe hidden in our kinks. She is beautiful, classy, witty, powerful, confident and spiritually masterful. She’s everything I want to be, and I get to be her — for exactly two hours.

I didn’t choose to be Lady Viviane; she chose me. She took a plain, little minister’s daughter, whose self esteem was crushed by the weight of physical insecurities and transformed her into a confident, wise woman helping to liberate people’s sexuality.

But it didn’t happen overnight. To get here, I would have to change an old cultural belief buried deep in my psyche that was running the show: that it was impossible to embrace my Christian faith and have a healthy relationship with my sexuality.

Growing up a minister’s daughter, I loved certain aspects of my faith, but eventually left the church when I left home for college at 18 because I was disgusted with its teachings about sexuality.

As a young adult, I threw myself into finding God in other places. From ayahuasca ceremonies to witchcraft, tantra retreats, new age festivals and BDSM parties, I looked everywhere. While I did have moments of profound, cosmic experiences with God, I could never quite integrate them into my everyday life or find consistent inner peace. Most of those years, I was sick, confused, lonely, broke, and just generally unhappy.

This was the state I was in when I was introduced to BDSM and the concept of female sexual domination. I had just moved to Santa Cruz and my roommate was a tantra coach. She began to tell me stories about these kink play parties she attended and would often show me videos of the professional dominatrixes who were there. Immediately I was struck by the confidence that just seemed to ooze out of their pores.

As our friendship continued, I asked her many questions about this magical dynamic in which women ruled the world, and how she felt basking in their commanding presence. Her fascinating stories planted the seed that I too could walk through life with the same sexual power.

At the time, I’d turned my professional vocal training and passion for singing into a semi-successful business teaching voice to women. However, my career was about to take a wild new turn.

A few days after leading a women’s voice retreat in Oregon, I got a totally random call from a man in L.A. who had found me on Yelp and wanted a tarot reading from me. I was a very mystical voice teacher and often incorporated other modalities; fairy tarot was one of my specialities at the time. After giving him a tarot reading and several coaching sessions, unpacking his desire to be submissive, he finally asked me: Will you please be the dominatrix for me? I eventually said yes, even though I had absolutely zero professional and very little personal experience with kink at the time.

He was in L.A. and I lived in Santa Cruz, so our sessions were over the phone. I stumbled my way through the first few sessions, but he would give me feedback afterward. Slowly my confidence grew, I kept getting better and soon I was providing wild, hypnotic experiences that allowed him to slip into total submission.

With my phone experience and support from friends in the industry, I knew it was time to take Lady Viviane into real time. I set up my own practice in the Bay Area and began to see clients in person.

Although I was exploring my own erotic desire to be sexually dominant and I knew I could provide powerful, healing experiences, my main incentives for becoming a dominatrix were to stop feeling ugly and “not good enough,” transform into a confident goddess and make that money, honey. I remember thinking one day, “I’m going to make thousands of dollars by having men worship me and tell me I’m beautiful?! I’m all in!”

I thought I could fix my wounds if I just slapped on some high heels and held a whip in my hand. But my wound did not get fixed. In fact, it got bigger. I found myself frustrated, broke and disgusted with clients who wasted my time, pushed boundaries and disrespected me. It was far from my fantasy of the hot, wealthy girl whipping her way to freedom and glory!

In disappointment, I walked away from the industry after a year and moved to Illinois with my new partner. But my financial problems and lack of career direction continued. About six months after the move, in a somewhat desperate attempt to change our lives, my partner and I attended an anointing service at a Pentecostal Church.

Sitting in the crowd, I immediately felt a waterfall of shame cascade over me. What the hell is a person like me doing with a bunch of Christians?! But alongside this shame was a surprising feeling of excitement. Miracles were on the way.

I found myself completely entranced by the four-hour service as I felt the words of the gospel touch my soul. I felt hope for my future and a deep sense of unconditional loving acceptance for who I was. My heart was opened, and by the end of the anointing, I knew I would never be the same.

Then another strange thing happened. Instead of judging me or telling me I was living in sin, God gave me the nudge to return to my work as Lady Viviane. How could this be?! I had lived my whole life believing I had to choose between being a Christian or having an empowered relationship with my body and sexuality. Was it even possible for them to coexist?

As I began practicing the teachings of Jesus, I felt happier and more secure in myself than I had felt in years. I know Christianity is not for everyone, and there are extremists who force their beliefs on others. But that’s not the kind of Christian I am. And even though I would go to church and hear about the “evil desires of the flesh,” there was something in my heart that just kept saying, That’s not true.

So I decided to try something radical: I decided to be a Christian and a dominatrix. But now that God was in the driver’s seat, everything about my work changed. Before I had put my own self-interest first; I idolized money and got high off the power I asserted over another person. Looking back at the energy I was putting out, it’s no wonder that I attracted that level of darkness right back to me.

But now with God and the teachings of Jesus leading me, I began to see every patron through God’s eyes, as God’s children. I started treating people with more love, kindness and compassion. I wanted to create genuine friendships and relationships with them. I became less concerned with how much they were paying me and more concerned about their well-being.

To this day, I rarely count the minutes when I’m with a patron; making sure they pay me for every last minute of my time is just not my style. My patrons are often shocked by this, as they have never experienced a dominatrix who cares more about them than the money.

As I started caring less about how much I was making, I made more money than I’d ever made in my life. Being able to pay my bills comfortably is a whole new reality for me. With my pure intentions leading the way, God was able to break the curse of poverty that had plagued me for so long.

Lady Viviane also stopped taking on clients who were looking for a fast, sexy experience. She started only working with those who wanted a deeper understanding of their unique kinks. Now, instead of a quick fix, my clients are seeking connection, love, renewed faith, healthy sexuality and a more fulfilling life.

I started praying to the Holy Spirit to guide my sessions.

Holy Spirit, come guide me, shine your light, and show me how to help this individual have a healthier, fulfilling relationship with their sexuality and with spirit.

I quickly saw that God was not separate from our sexuality or erotic desires. God was present in the desires. I saw how God could work through kink to bring out the hidden, shamed parts of a person’s psyche that had never felt seen or loved before. Once these parts felt loved and liberated, their lives would begin to open up in miraculous ways.

Professionally, I now openly represent myself as a Christian dominatrix who uses Christian rituals to heal the connection between sexuality and spirit. My clients often come to me because I work specifically with the deconditioning of the religious wound that has caused harmful beliefs around their sexuality. I encourage my patrons to put those suppressed desires before God. Out of the shadow of shame, they are no longer “wicked” or “evil”― they are holy.

Tiptoeing my way back into Christianity has been a delicate process, and at times, I’ve had to sit with a massive inner conflict: Why am I choosing to return to a religion that stigmatizes the very thing I am trying to liberate?

Fortunately, I’ve landed in some Christian circles that encourage having the “tough” conversations about Christianity. But I’ll admit, it’s an ongoing struggle to openly and honestly represent myself, my profession and my beliefs. My partner and I have experienced judgment and discrimination for living together outside of marriage, so I can only imagine what the reaction would be to discovering that I’m a dominatrix for a living.

At church, when I am asked what I do for work, my heartbeat starts to race. I usually stutter something like, “I’m a relationship coach,” and then shift the conversation to something else as quickly as I can.

When I have mustered up the courage to tell a few open-minded Christians about being a dominatrix and why I do it, I’ve been able to have beautiful, meaningful conversations. I’ve seen it open people up to be honest about the shame and guilt they’ve been carrying about their sexuality, and the ongoing struggle of feeling they have to choose between their faith and their authentic sexual expression.

Most modern Christian churches shame and suppress sexuality, discriminating against the LGBT+ community, sex workers and anyone choosing to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage. These are toxic and outdated beliefs, and they need to go. But when I go back to the tried and true teachings of Jesus, I am able to look past the harmful parts to how incredible Jesus actually was. He spoke out against oppressive systems and called out spiritual leaders on the rigid religious laws that were making God inaccessible to all people.

In the Bible, there are multiple accounts of Jesus welcoming, spending time with and performing miracles for prostitutes and adulterers, the “sexually immoral” people in society at that time. Jesus never cast anyone out, and he never denied anyone the miracles, signs and wonders that flowed through him; he wanted everyone to have a personal relationship with God, free from the constraints of organized religion.

So even though many Christians would view me as “sinful” and even undeserving of a relationship with God, I reject that view, because I know Jesus loves me and wants the best for my life.

And if a “dirty” dominatrix like me is worthy of miracles, then I believe a meaningful relationship with God is available to everyone who wants it.

Katharine Wyld is a professional dominatrix based in Chicago, IL. She is a writer, singer/songwriter, a voice coach for women and dedicated to her Christian faith. You can learn more about her at www.katharinewyld.com. Instagram: @katharinewyldmusic @wildwomenvoices. TikTok: @katharinewyld Spotify: Katharine Wyld

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.