How Grieving Herpes Helped Me Walk Free

When you had heard that you (or a partner) had been diagnosed with genital herpes…

How did you grieve?
What did you grieve?
Who did you grieve?
Or did you grieve?

I am a believer that it’s important that when we get tough news around things like health
to not bypass the grief that the news brings. The grief—no matter what type—is an
important aspect and recognition of the experience. It’s important to get it out of your
body and expressed while also not letting it consume you. The grief is part of the
integration of the experience and the way forward. The grief is part of the gift that comes
from suffering. (Sometimes, in cases like a herpes diagnosis that is shrouded in shame,
we can also prolong grief when we don’t bring others along as support.)

If Jesus grieved in the garden to the extent of sweating blood (Hebrews 5:7), if Jesus
wept in front of Lazarus’ tomb (John 11:35), and if Jesus wept as he progressed forward
to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (Luke 19:41)—surely Jesus doesn’t discredit our grief.

For me, grief looked like crying out to my parents over the phone and mentally
wanting to claw myself back to my old life. (Thankfully, that wasn’t possible, because
what was to come was something beyond my imagination).

For me, grief looked like the disassociation of my upper body from my lower body
and not quite knowing the feeling of not being comfortable with my own body to that
extent.

For me, grief looked like a promise to myself to never let my fleeting sexual desires
interfere with my future dreams, family, and health.

For me, grief looked like educating myself around sexual health and deciding to be
part of the solution to help and educate others.

For me, grief looked like walking into church and letting the tears roll down my face
as I heard better words than the ones my head was filled with.

Here’s what I know looking back on those days and where I am now.

God had been with me in each of those moments of grief even before I knew Him. God,
all along, had been calling me closer to Him. If I hadn’t grieved the circumstance like I
did, I couldn’t enter the fullness of the gift of the circumstance.

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You

have recorded each one in your book.”

Psalm 56:8 (NLT)

I imagine Jesus back then sitting down and just stroking my head as I woke up each
morning saying softly in His heavenly whispers...

Lindsey, all these idols you have. Leave them. Seek me.
Lindsey, all your grand plans. Set them aside. Follow me.
Lindsey, all your sufferings. Fear not. Give them to me.
Lindsey, all your shame. Lay it at the cross. You are cleansed.
Lindsey, I want all of you. Not just some. All.
I even want to walk with you and your sexual desires.
Come, and let’s go deeper still. I have a new life. A new way.

I didn’t know back then when I was grieving and having the word “dirty” fluttering around
in my mind, God foreknew He was going to purify me. That He would walk me not only
in those initial days of the diagnosis, but through writing my book to help others. And
thereafter I would experience how His refining fire would cleanse the depths of the
spiritual effects of my sexual past.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and

the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

1 John 1:7 (NIV)

So dear reader, wherever you are in your process may I encourage you: don’t be afraid
of any grief or of grieving. And also, don’t allow yourself to be overcome by it. God
wants to meet you in the grief and more importantly God wants to set you free from the
grief.

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or

crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Revelation 21:4 (NIV)

All His light,

Lindsey Ellyn

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