How I Found Freedom After Herpes

When you think about freedom what comes to mind?

For me things like breathing fully, feeling unencumbered, spacious places, being known,
and vulnerability comes to mind.

I thought freedom was found when I started talking to people about what I was going
through.
Freedom did come, in part.

I thought freedom was found when I made it into a therapist office to really address what
I was walking through.
Freedom did come, in part.

I thought freedom was found when I put pen to paper (or should I say fingers to
keyboards) and wrote The Shame Game.
Freedom did come, in part.

I thought freedom was found when my book was published and I could share my story
with the world.
Freedom did come, in part.

However true freedom, real freedom, came when God met me in my apartment on my
kitchen floor one day and spiritually cleansed me from the diagnosis and all the hidden
spiritual impacts of my sexual past and the identity wrapped up in it.

Freedom came unexpectedly, while I was physically alone in my apartment—with a dear
friend and her mom praying over the phone, and over me—and God poured out His
love on me.

That’s when true freedom came.

After that day, I experienced more completely how The Shame Game is once and for all
finished when we recognize that God himself comes and erases all our shame through
His Son. When we give our shame to Jesus and walk fully free. When we allow the Holy
Spirit to occupy the places where shame used to lie.

Jesus already won the game for you. For me.

So, do you want true freedom from herpes?

Then hold onto the one core identity: your identity to God.

We all are made in the image of God and, for those who know Jesus, we are Children of
God.

And that dear reader, is how we walk free.

All His light,
Lindsey Ellyn