How Herpes Distorts Our Identity

I remember once hearing that we never actually see ourselves, only reflections of ourselves through mirrors. It’s everyone else who sees us with the most accuracy, because it’s reality versus a reflection.

The opposite of that is also true too: no one who sees us ever actually knows all of us, only the appearance we project on the outside. It’s us who understands our inside world with the most accuracy, because it’s reflection versus a reality.

So, it is wild to think—if we can’t see ourselves on the outside with accuracy and those outside of us can’t see our inside accurately—then who are we really? Who knows us really?

The answer if both simple, and a complexity that my three decades on this earth still can’t comprehend the magnitude:

God sees it.

He sees the outside.

He knows the inside.

God is the only one who knows the totality of us.

It was His hand that created it. His intention? For us to live lives in relationship with Him, in our full identity: naked and unashamed. Provided for and protected by.

All too quickly though, sin entered the world: woman and man were deceived and wanted to access the level of wisdom God had. And so, with one pluck of a fruit from a forbidden tree: it all changed.

And they…or shall I say we…suddenly felt the need to hide—as if that would be successful—from the One that breathed life into us and built us. And we also felt the need to hide from each other. It was God who constructed cloths for Adam and Eve knowing that shame around sexuality “entered the chat”.

Consider it all too familiar when a diagnosis like herpes gets “attached” to us then. Shame around sexuality further deepens, and identity and worth can easily become questioned. The questions suddenly become something to the effect of:

· Am I loved?

· Can I be loved?

· And does that love exist even in imperfections?

Sexual shame is, to me, the pinnacle of all shame. If not, why would the first thing Adam and Eve do is to hide their reproductive parts? If not, why would God provide a covering in response to what He knew they would do? Isn’t most of our cultural war about and around so many topics about sexuality these days?

If there’s one thing that was exposed when I had heard I had a herpes diagnosis, it was where my identity came from. And boy, was it entirely in the wrong place. Herpes crumbled me because the foundation I had independently built all my life was a weak one filled with worldly things.

How did I determine that? It relied on what others thought or would think of me, versus understanding my inherent worth and identity that God placed in me. That is, the identity of a daughter of God, the grace and freedom given to me when I accepted Christ, and the true mark that mattered beyond any physical skin condition—the spiritual condition—and the Holy Spirit who began to occupy my innermost beings and break all the chains that laid unaddressed.

So whether you’ve just received a diagnosis or have been in agreement with the diagnosis for a while, let this be a reminder: the shame around sexual health can make you run and hide from God and others.

Or.

Or…it can be the moment where you take a good look at God and surrender the false reflection you’ve taken in about yourself. And in place of the missing piece that others can’t discern, and you can’t see, let God bring about the revealing of who He calls you to be, how He sees you, and the new name that’s given to us when we are born again and accept Christ. Or perhaps for some who go running back into Christ’s arms after being gone for so long.

All my light,

Lindsey Ellyn