All Things Are Working For My Good
When I found out that I had contracted herpes a few weeks after my 21st birthday, I thought my life was over. I thought there was no point in living. Who would love me or want to be with me now? I would have to be extra careful during childbirth IF I had kids. I thought God was mad at me for going back on my promise of waiting until marriage to have sex. This was my punishment. However, I was still confused. I knew people who were way more promiscuous than me and they were unaffected or contracted something curable. Why me?!
It took a while before I really analyzed the situation. Before I contracted herpes, I was desperate for a relationship, for someone to want to claim me, for someone to tell me that I was worthy enough of love. From observing my surroundings, it seemed the gateway to a relationship was through sex. Despite the multitudes of lectures I received about sex and love not being synonymous, I still allowed my thinking to be warped by the world and culture. My beginning fantasy of wanting to go out on dates before becoming official was now changed to the hopes that a guy would choose me after we started out as cuddy buddies (or sneaky links as we say now). As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I ended up with a boyfriend, but discovered I had herpes shortly after the relationship started.
At one point, I asked myself, “Would you have been more cautious about sex if the STD would have been curable?” The honest answer was “probably not.” I might have been cautious initially after my breakup, but after the next hurt, I would have been back on the prowl with sex as the bait. The truth hit me and for the first time in my life I realized maybe, just maybe, that was the reason why I contracted Type I Genital Herpes. God knew that was the one thing that would force me to sit my behind down.
However, it did more than that and God knew it would. Contracting herpes was the start of my self-love journey. It didn’t start immediately, but somewhere along the way, it forced me to see my good and value besides sex. It forced me to go to therapy and to start unpacking my trauma, including the source of the trauma that led me to use sex as a sole way to get a boyfriend. Believe it or not, it was part of what helped me to lean stronger on God and to build a relationship with God.
For those who may be reading who also have an incurable STD, I understand that your situation may be different. You may have contracted it from someone you trusted and knew for a long time, you may have been violated and contracted it from your abuser or you may have contracted it in your first encounter. Please, don’t read this and believe that I am saying you were promiscuous or all the other negative stereotypes the world loves to place on us. What I am trying to say is the infamous Christian mantra that ALL things are working for your good. God can use anything and anybody. Look at the woman with the blood issue, the woman with multiple husbands, Mary Magdalene or Rahab. If that isn’t enough to convince you, there are more than enough fallen men who God used.
Because of God and through God, I am healing. I am understanding that I am “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14, NIV). I am not unloved or far from forgiveness because of my STD. It is in fact the opposite. Moreover, God is giving me strength to tell my testimony, whether it’s to one person or thousands.
There is no situation God can’t or won’t deliver you from. There’s no situation you can’t turn from. Romans 8:28 (NLT) says, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
Whether it’s an STD or something else, God can use it to give you a powerful testimony, but only if you give it to Him.
