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Shame has a way of convincing us to hide. But Jesus doesn’t turn away from your shame. He steps toward it.
This week, Juli sits down with Dr. Carol Tanksley and Allie Mazur to shed light on the often unspoken reality of living with an STI. Together, they unpack the weight of shame, the fear of rejection, and the questions that can follow a diagnosis like herpes.
You’ll be reminded that while consequences of sin may linger, they don’t have the final word. Jesus meets us right in the middle of our brokenness, offering freedom, healing, and hope.
If you’ve ever felt like your story is “too much” or “too broken,” this conversation is for you.
Juli (00:00.11)
Hey, welcome to Java with Juli. I’m Juli Slattery and this podcast is an outreach of Authentic Intimacy, a ministry dedicated to helping people make sense of God and sexuality.
Well, I think few things challenge our sense of identity more than consequences that we just can’t undo. When someone learns they’ve contracted a sexually transmitted infection that has no cure, where that can trigger deep feelings of shame, regret, and isolation. Questions about your worth, future relationships, and even God’s grace often surface. Well, today we want to talk honestly about how to navigate the stigma connected to past sexual choices and how freedom and hope are still possible. You’re going to hear from a young woman, Allie Mazur; she’s going to share her story of navigating life after contracting an STI and what it looks like to navigate shame and regret in the wake of being diagnosed with herpes. But before we get to Allie’s story, I have Dr. Carol Tanksley in the studio with me. Dr. Carol is a good friend who has practiced as an OBGYN physician and reproductive endocrinologist for over 29 years. And she’s retired now, but Dr. Carol, you have such a heart to help people navigate some of these sensitive issues around sexuality that I understand that keeps you pretty busy, is that right?
Carol (01:26.798)
It sure does. And let me say, Juli, to be called a friend of Dr. Juli Slattery is one of the best compliments I could receive. I consider you a friend also. And yes, this area of sexuality and helping people through the hard places in relationships and intimacy and the sexual part of that specifically has become, if anything, I’m busier now than ever. And really honored that God would ask me to speak into this. And I know with Authentic Intimacy, you know some of the weight and some of the hard stories that people bring in this area.
Juli (02:06.326)
Yeah, this area of ministry represents so much pain and questions and people feel like they don’t know where there’s a safe place they can go and address the real things. And so I often tell them about you and you just do such a great job of coaching people from a medical perspective, but even more importantly, through the spiritual undertones of what they might be walking through. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about a lot today, Dr. Carol, on this topic of STIs. In my day and age, we always called them STDs, but I think that changed recently. If we can just even start by maybe setting the table of what do we consider an STI?
Carol (02:50.76)
A bacteria or virus or similar organism that gets passed from person to person through intimate sexual contact. Most of the time that might be genital to genital, but it doesn’t necessarily have to come that way. It can be oral genital or other body parts, but intimate sexual contact with some type of infectious agent.
Many of our listeners will probably know a lot of the words out there that the kinds of infections and again, just a trigger warning. Some of these words can be real sensitive, herpes being one. You mentioned that already and that’s what we’ll focus on today. And there are many others. As an OB-GYN physician during the years I was seeing patients, sadly this was one of the more frequent issues that I had to help people through.
Juli (03:43.131)
It really is something I don’t feel like we talk about often. I mean, obviously I’m in this space of talking about sexuality on a daily basis, but this topic rarely doesn’t even come up in the things that I’m reading or the things I’m listening to. But yet I understand that STIs are really common in American and Western culture. Can you talk about the prevalence?
Carol (04:08.504)
The CDC estimates that actually a majority of people have contacted an STI. Herpes is not the most frequent. It is among the most frequent. There are a couple viruses that are even more common than herpes. And it’s certainly something I saw frequently in my medical practice. I remember this young woman who was, if I remember right, she was 19 and she came in with this horrible pain and I examined her and we asked the questions and I had to give her the news: I believe this is herpes and just the devastation that she felt. I have two close personal friends at my stage of life who have been living with herpes for a number of years, and they don’t want to talk about it. I remember one of these good friends who years ago called me friend to friend, because I was a doctor, she needed medication in her case to control the herpes outbreaks, and she did not want to go to a pharmacy in her town. It was a relatively small town with only two or three pharmacies, and she wouldn’t go to a pharmacy there because so many people knew her, and she didn’t want them to see her picking up a prescription for this.
So she wanted me to call it into another pharmacy at a larger city about an hour away. So I’ve seen both the medical and just the emotional weight that these kinds of problems bring.
Juli (05:44.494)
I can understand why she’d feel that way. I mean I have empathy for her and if I heard you correctly You said the majority of us have or have had at some point an STI, like over 50 %?
Carol (06:00.832)
Yes, whether that’s HPV or chlamydia, which tend to be the most common, but herpes is right up there. There’s ones that other people may be aware of like syphilis or gonorrhea and there are others. But we don’t talk often enough about how big an issue this is in our culture.
Juli (06:21.934)
Why is that? mean, all these topics are uncomfortable, but I feel like we’re talking about pornography. We’re talking about abuse and abuse recovery. We’re talking about betrayals and marital affairs. mean, none of these things are comfortable to talk about, but I feel like there’s absolute silence on this issue that, again, the research is suggesting impacts over half of us that contracted it. And then the family members and the spouses of those people as well.
Carol (06:52.044)
I don’t know that there’s hardly a person who is not impacted in some way, whether it’s through a spouse or family member or whatever. Why aren’t we talking about it? I think it’s a shame. In the church and even outside the church, it’s one thing to struggle with pornography that’s not body to body, or even when you get into affairs, or serial hookups or those, but that doesn’t make you a danger to someone else in the way that an STI does. One of the things that I believe brings a lot of shame is the sense that I can never, from here on through the rest of my life in some cases, such as herpes, have sex with another person completely safely. That I will always have something dangerous in me. That I believe they’re going to look differently at me with and can we ever be sexually intimate without this being the elephant in the room?
Juli (07:59.454)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can even imagine that, and certainly within the confines of marriage Those are hard conversations, but I can imagine people who are dating and you know trying to navigate those conversations with sharing this information with somebody that you’re going out with or considering marrying, that just must be so difficult and I’m guessing a lot of couples don’t ever even talk about it.
Carol (08:27.486)
And one of my close friends, one of the two close friends I mentioned who has herpes was in exactly that kind of situation. She and her soon to be husband had both been married previously. Their spouses had died. And in their past histories, both of them had had sex with other individuals as well. They were following Jesus and moving toward marriage and in their case had sex before the wedding night, but they were moving toward marriage and one of them had never known that they had had herpes before, but right after this encounter had a horrible outbreak. And the other individual just was devastated because they had, quotes, forgot to talk about this. It created major issues. So I agree, Juli, this is not something people normally want to talk about. Even with an intended spouse, if you’re doing everything quotes right right now, this is something from your past that always, like it keeps looking over your shoulder, so to speak.
Now, as followers of Jesus, we know what Jesus grace can do. But that feeling that I am forever carrying something that I don’t want anybody to know.
Juli (09:45.598)
Yeah. You know, we know that we have redemption through Christ, but that doesn’t mean the earthly consequences of some of the things that we may have done or even our spouse did without telling us don’t play into our everyday life, which can make feeling free and forgiven even more difficult. Dr. Carol, we are going to listen to Allie share about her own experience in this. But before we do, I would love if you could just give us a little bit of a rundown of medically what is herpes, how does it manifest, why is it dangerous?
Carol (10:22.072)
Herpes is a virus that once your body contacts that virus, it can never be eliminated from your body by medical means. Now, as I tell patients who know Jesus, you know, God does miracles. However, there is no medical treatment that can ever eliminate that virus from your body. It sits in nerve cells and with certain triggers in the future, that virus can flare up and cause problems again. The most common symptoms are very painful sores, like blisters that hurt, that can most commonly be in the genital area, but true cold sores on the mouth are also caused by one of the herpes viruses. When your immune system comes in contact with this virus and creates antibodies to fight it, your immune system can often keep that virus at bay. But not everybody’s immune system does that adequately well on its own. So periodically, significant numbers of people who have herpes will get an outbreak. That virus will flare up again, and again cause painful sores. Those sores may last for a few days to a week or two.
Carol (11:46.59)
Medication, if somebody chooses to take medication can shorten how long that virus is showing itself. It can speed up the healing of those lesions, those sores. And for somebody who has outbreaks relatively frequently, medication on an ongoing basis can lessen the likelihood that that virus will flare up again. One of the very challenging and frustrating parts of the herpes virus is you may be able to shed the virus. In other words, you may be able to pass on the virus to an intimate sexual partner, even if you don’t know that you have an outbreak at that point. It is certainly much easier to pass it on if you do have sores right now, but it’s possible to pass it on regardless. And that’s part of what makes this so challenging.
And one final word about the consequences. If a woman is pregnant, and that virus is present at the time she delivers a baby. And that baby contacts the virus, that can be extremely damaging to that infant because the baby doesn’t have the immune system to keep that virus at bay.
Juli (12:56.854)
Yeah, so really heavy things to be dealing with for those who have that virus or you’re married to someone who is. Yes. If you’re in the situation of being married to somebody who has a herpes virus, is there any way for you to stay safe?
Carol (13:14.83)
The only way to 100 % guarantee that you will never get the virus if your marriage partner has had herpes is not to have sex. However, the chance of passing it on is quite low if you don’t have any lesions. So one thing I will always recommend is if one partner in a marriage has had herpes and they ever have any tingling or pain or possible outbreak, don’t have sex during those symptoms. And if that individual chooses to take what we call suppressive medication, which is a pill a day, it’s not fun, but it is possible, that lowers the risk dramatically even more. It’s not a 100 % guarantee, but it gets it pretty close. So if you are committing to this person in marriage, they have infrequent outbreaks and they’re willing to take medication. I would tell somebody contemplating getting married in that situation, under God are you choosing to say yes to the whole package? This is the person that you are giving your love to. We will take all the precautions that we can, understanding that that still doesn’t eliminate the risk to absolute zero.
Juli (14:35.214)
Yeah. Well, thank you for that candid explanation. I don’t think I’ve ever heard all that information before. So, um, very helpful and also impactful for those who are walking through this. And we’re going to listen to Allie Mazur. I told you a little bit about her, but Allie contracted genital herpes when she was 23 years old. You’re going to hear more of her story, but now 10 years later, she’s actually started a company called Beyond Herpes, where she helps people heal from some of the fear and shame of that diagnosis. And her heart is really to share about God’s love for them and his plan for love and intimacy. So take a listen as Allie shares a little bit of her story.
Juli
Allie, it is a delight to have you on Java with Juli, so welcome.
Allie (15:30.328)
Thank you, I’m so happy to be here.
Juli (15:33.016)
All the way from California. Yes. You’re a cool girl. All the way on the west coast.
Allie (15:39.15)
I’m a surfer girl, yeah.
Juli (15:40.718)
Are you really?
Allie (15:42.99)
Yeah, yeah.
Juli
Awesome. My husband was a surfer. He grew up in Florida. So, but he tells me all the best surfing was in California.
Allie (15:51.95)
It is part of my story here, so it might sneak in later.
Juli (15:57.174)
Yeah, I can’t wait to hear it. So I already gave our audience a little preview on what we’re going to be talking about today. And let me just start by just saying thank you for being so courageous to talk about something that nobody really wants to talk about. And so maybe the best way to launch in is for you to start telling a bit of your story and then we can go from there.
Allie (16:20.078)
Yeah, I would love to. So I was living in New York City. I was 23 at the time, I think. And I found myself on an exam table in probably an emergency room. It was the worst pain I’d ever experienced down there in my life. And I was told by a nurse practitioner that, oh, looks like you have the herpes virus. And my whole world was in that moment just evaporated. I thought my life was over. So for context, I had just been physically intimate, like sexually, with a guy that I was dating for just a few weeks off of Tinder. And at the time, I would still call myself a Christian. I think this is an important nuance, though. I had waited for a very, I had wanted to wait until marriage for sex. And all through my high school years, I had serious boyfriends. Through college, I dated. But I was like, I am going to be a virgin until marriage. This is God’s plan for love. But somewhere I crumbled and I felt like everyone else around me was losing their virginity and something was wrong with me. And did I even get this God thing right? And I slowly stopped going to church. And anyway, not to get all into that right away, but like this is why I found myself being intimate with someone that I wasn’t in a marriage with.
And I think that was part of the reason it was one of the most painful and shocking experiences of my life. So, yeah, so I freaked out. I was in so much despair and physical pain that I actually took medical leave from my job. I had a great job in New York at the time at a tech startup. I was living the cool dream in sales, and making a great salary and partying on the weekends. I was living like a fabulous 23 year old life, but it all kind of crumbled when I found this out. And I remember one night sitting at home at my parents’ home in Georgia, I flew home for a month to just like process everything. I sat up in my bed one night with a flashlight looking at my dad’s medical books. He’s a doctor. And just looking at herpes stuff and being so distraught and then YouTubing it. And I couldn’t find anyone talking about it, like that I could resonate with, no one.
Allie (18:44.462)
And I remember in that moment making a promise to God and myself, I don’t know if we’re supposed to promise God, but I made a promise that I was going to eventually be on a stage or on a YouTube channel. I saw a Ted Talk about it, and I was gonna be someone speaking about it and helping people because at the time when I got it, I had loving parents. I had a dad that was a doctor and understood. I had a mom I could talk to, I had friends, but, I knew and I know now not everyone has that base or that network when they find this out. They may be in a toxic relationship. They may have been in phase in their life where they don’t have good relationships with their family, or their church. So I thought if this is so painful for me right now, how is it for people who don’t have the support? And I decided I was going to start a Herpes company, but it took it took 10 years. I was 23 and then I didn’t start it till I was 33. So, and I had a whole life in between. It was just one of those beautiful things where you know in your heart it’ll be in your life at some point.
Juli (19:47.808)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’m guessing in those 10 years there was a lot of processing, a lot of healing. What would you say were some of the foundational pieces that you had to deal with in the aftermath?
Allie (20:01.838)
Yes, so it’s dark before it gets better. So I’ll share that piece. So after I got it and found out, OK, you have this thing now that quote unquote is with you for the rest of your life, but also a reminder to anyone listening, it doesn’t have to be something you think about or physically deal with the rest of your life. Like I haven’t had an outbreak now in seven years. So I speak a lot about that and help with that. But I all of a sudden was afraid no one would accept me. So here I am, 23, wanting love in a relationship, living in New York; dating’s crazy already. And then I thought, well, I better figure out a way for people to accept me. So I started sharing openly when I would meet a guy or I would go on a first or second date. And if someone accepted me for it, Juli, like often within a few dates, I would be open to sex because I, looking back, I realized that it was like so scary and I was so relieved that I just didn’t wanna lose this, I was like grasping and gripping at like, okay, I can, there’s a word for it, like validation or something that like you’re going to be loved even with this affliction, or this virus that you have. So I did have a period of two or three years maybe where it wasn’t like crazy, but it was like, know, having some flings and with that involved sex and or dating a guy that I didn’t really think was going to be the one and going ahead and sleeping with him, and that to me is I’m talking about it lighthearted and right now but it was and still is something that I have had to work with counselors on and my priests. I go to spiritual direction and reconciliation because it is something that is heavy and I wish more people would have told me this will affect your future and you know even to this day my boyfriend and I have you know healing to do in this in this space of like, this was a big part of my past. So I think living through that was just another way that made I mean, it’s, you know, I don’t push that on anyone, but it’s a way I’m able to relate to a lot of the people that come to me because a lot of people that get herpes go through the same thing. They just feel like, well, what the heck? Here I am with this thing. No real person is going to really want to marry me. And then they kind of give up. And that is not the way. But I went through that.
Juli (22:28.782)
So if I would just, yeah, to summarize that, so a lot of it was just sort of like dealing with the shame and maybe not dealing with it, but reacting from it and trying to prove to yourself that somebody’s going to want me, somebody will accept me. And that took the form of relationships and flings, and things like that.
Allie (22:51.862)
Exactly, which is tragic because if I had, I look back, and if I had friends in my life that were more Formed and in God’s ways or you know, I was totally adrift from that at this point I might have gone a different direction more quickly, you know, but yeah and I think well then the next step kind of helped me on this slow journey back to where I am now, but I got an amazing job. I moved back to New York, whatever, got over. It started living my pretty normal quote unquote life again. But I started to get really into my health. I think herpes impacted me more than I even realized, mental health-wise and physically. I started to have all sorts of gut issues. But so I dove head first into yoga and meditation and the wellness world in New York, and you know, that’s a whole nother conversation, but it eventually led me to an amazing company that did corporate fitness and corporate wellness and massages and mindfulness and nutrition. And so I had, I became the head of sales and the like eventually the vice president of this company. And it was, it was amazing. It was a huge part of me finally like coming back to taking care of my health and my body.
It’s just, I love talking about it though with, with other Christians, cause there is some stuff we did there that it wasn’t exactly calling me back to God because I thought I could do it all on my own. Like I thought I could heal my mind and body with these practices. So that was like step two though. But eventually I still felt that deep like pain and yearning for something else that I was like, God, what is it? I have a great job. I have a great salary. I live in the quote unquote coolest place in the world. Like I knew something was very off, and I would go down to Costa Rica in the winters and I had a moment, this is like, I didn’t know I would get to this kind of crazy story, but I had a moment one winter on my surfboard in Costa Rica where I really felt God and the Holy Spirit say to me, you need to leave New York. Like it is not serving you. You’re not going in the right direction. And I literally went back to New York. I told my amazing CEO that I was gonna leave New York.
And that’s really when things, the work began because when I left, when I listened to that, like God’s voice, which, know, I think some people hear it a lot. Some people hear it a little, but I remember the times I hear it and I listened and I moved to California and I put myself in an entirely different lifestyle of help being more health conscious people. Drinking is a huge thing that I left behind in New York, and Californians, I mean, just as a generalization, when I would go to like, gatherings here my first year, they’d be like, do you want a kombucha or a tea? Like, like, God, you knew I needed a change. And then anyway, that led me to finally have the space in my mind and my heart to be open to God again.
Juli (26:01.858)
Yeah, when you’re talking about that a little bit, it reminds me of Ecclesiastes, know, like Solomon saying, yeah, I tried this, you I tried wealth, I tried work, you know, I tried pleasure, like I had all these things, but it all ended up being like vapor in the wind. It was vain. And it sounds like just in that course of maybe seven or eight years, like you were trying all these things to find fulfillment, find peace. And ultimately, you know, they were empty, even though the world would say, yeah, that’s the Instagram dream right there. It was all empty.
Allie (26:42.542)
Yeah, wow. No, it’s so, it’s, that’s it. I love, I love Ecclesiastes. That is so true. And, but I guess too, to just, to go back to the herpes thing and where it got me with relationship. Cause I think that’s a lot of people wonder, you know, okay, well she’s the herpes girl. She has it. She’s, then how does, how does, when am I going to start talking about it? And that is when I finally started dating more seriously, like dating for marriage, which you know, should have been doing all along.
And I realized that, my goodness, even men that want to seriously date me, this isn’t necessarily an issue or a deal breaker for them. So that was very game changing too. And I started to see that I could share my story with others. And it wasn’t just the story of casual intimacy in New York and my shame. And it was a story of like total redemption, like God bringing me back to him, bringing me back to right relationship. And there were some bumps along the way, but when it came to herpes, it just was never the issue anymore. I wasn’t getting rejected for it.
Juli (27:47.006)
Yeah. How did you get past the shame of feeling like, okay, I’m carrying in my body, you know, like people could even spiritualize it and say like a punishment for my sin, I’m never going to get rid of it. Like, how did you work through that reality without it just being shame?
Allie (28:06.35)
Two things come to mind. The first thing, it was talking about it. It was talking out loud about it with people I loved and with strangers. But at first, because I know not everyone’s going to want to talk to strangers, some people come to me and they’ve never talked to anyone. And when I was able to talk to my parents, my best friend, the shame starts to not have as much of a grip because you’re in communion with others.
So for me, it was talking about it, shedding light on it, literally. Then secondly, it was doing everything else I could in my power to show my body that I loved it and cared for it. So I focused on my diet, on exercise, on just being the best version of myself. And it did help. I started to eat really healthy. I cut out refined sugar because that helps not quote unquote feed the virus. And I know I’m thinking, does this relate to shame? But it did because I was so proud of myself, like good kind of proud, for caring and for loving and for resisting temptation with sweets and excess alcohol that I felt wonderful about my body and my decisions in that way. And it kind of balanced out the lingering shame of the diagnosis.
Juli (29:29.454)
I could see how, you know, if you’re having this conversation in society, you know, people are embracing you, they’re encouraging health. Sometimes these conversations, though, unfortunately, are more difficult to have in faith communities, like when you go to your church or you talk to your Christian friends or, you know, like, how have you experienced maybe a different kind of reception in those environments?
Allie (30:00.23)
This is such a good question because to be honest, I haven’t had as much of a chance even to be open about it in those environments because I feel like it is less like stigmatized in the very secular pro free love world that for the past two years since I started the business, it’s been a lot easier to get onto podcasts, for example, that are all about dating and intimacy and without marriage or outside of anyway. So when I try to bring it or even try to talk to like church friends about it, it’s just not necessarily even as relatable because a lot of them either just keep it in the context of their marriage. So I have a lot of married Christian friends that, and that’s not, I don’t look down on that at all. Like they might just decide that’s something between them and their husband and that’s fine. But I haven’t yet tapped into that space. Whereas it’s almost painful because the non-Christian circles are so open to talking about it. Anyway, it’s interesting.
Juli (31:07.022)
No, you’re not alone in that. You know, I’ve had people, particularly in younger demographics, say, my friends show me a lot more grace than my Christian community does. And I feel a lot more free to talk about things I’m struggling with or things I experience because I’m not afraid that they’re going to judge me. Some of it is adults often aren’t comfortable talking about these things in faith communities. You know, that’s kind of what my job is I go into a lot of Christian communities and talk about different aspects of sexuality and God’s redemption and healing and His plan. And I’ve seen within the last like 14 years since I started this ministry, much more openness to talk about certain things. Like you said, pornography, we’re more open to talk about sexual trauma. We’re more open to talk about like betrayal trauma and all that sort of thing. But we don’t talk about STIs, we don’t talk about herpes, you know, like we don’t talk a lot about abortion. you know, there’s certain things that carry more of a stigma and I’m sure people that are dealing with that in their present or their past, those issues, they feel like, all right, well yeah, everybody else has, you know, some sexual brokenness, but mine must be worse. Yeah. And so the fact that you’re willing to talk about it, like, and just, invite people to be honest about what they’re struggling with is just so key to opening up that conversation.
Allie (32:42.402)
Yeah, and I think too, and for anyone listening with herpes, as soon as you open it up, there’s then the chance for hope that God can heal your brokenness from it. then, for example, when I work with clients who are open to the Christian side of it, I get so excited, my heart lights up. I’m like, let’s open your Bible. Let’s talk about the woman at the well, the prodigal son, because God gives so many examples in the Bible. It’s almost as if one of the main features of the whole gospel is healing from shame and sexual shame at that. Yeah, you know this better than anyone. And so why Herpes stays in the dark, especially in Christian circles just like baffles me because I’m like, it’s all right there in the Bible.
Juli (33:28.942)
Yeah, I’m sure some of the people that Jesus interacted with had forms of sexually transmitted diseases. They existed back then and the scripture isn’t shy about talking about sexual sin, sexual brokenness, sexual trauma. So, yeah, and He ministered to the whole person, to the body, to the mind, to the soul, to the spirit.
Allie (33:54.508)
Yeah, and something that brings up that I’m curious, or just like your thoughts too, is when people come to me and they, and this was true for me too, when they’re living in, and they’re still living in sexual sin, like they’re still in a relationship that is a situationship, for example, and they’re still having sex with someone who they don’t love or whatever it is, that often can be a trigger to our nervous system which then impacts the way our body reacts. I’ll just say for myself, because I’m not the doctor here, but I will say for myself, herpes outbreaks, when I was getting them, would often come from the triggering of my nervous system, knowing that I was living outside of God’s plan for intimacy. So I always, because something you said made me think of this like punishment. It’s not that it’s punishment. It’s that God is like giving us this this litmus test, this tool, this thing to know, like, no, no, I want you to get back on track. And I don’t know, it’s complicated, because then it sounds in a way like punishment, but if we only recognize what it was, it was a loving sign or nudge, like, no, my body does not like this. That’s what I wish I could tell every one of my clients is what in your life is out of line, is out of whack, because once you find that and you turn to, like, you know, a lot of the stories in the gospel, like, he doesn’t just heal people, he says, go and sin no more. So that’s a huge part of like the STI and STD thing too is because we can’t just expect things to go away if we fall right back into sin.
Juli (35:32.492)
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m glad you said that because, you know, there’s a distinction between punishment, which is God doing something to us and Him calling us to live within His design, which saves us from the consequences of doing life on our own and going outside of His design. And, you know, Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians 6 that when we sin sexually, we’re sinning against our own body. That we’re doing things to our own body that are going to be harmful. So, you I think a lot of people automatically go to God’s punishing me, He’s withholding His love from me instead of, no, I’m choosing to step away from the peace, the shalom, the wellness that He offers me.
Allie (36:19.958)
Yeah. And it makes me, it makes me remember, Juli, what my parents always taught me growing up. And I did go to Catholic school for a little bit and I remember being taught this too. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Like so simple, so clear. And I always, always thought that and remembered my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And, you know, so I hope young people hear that and take it into consideration what that means. And I did for a time until I fell into sexual sin. But what I was going to say is going all the way back, like back to the beginning of the Bible, that when Adam and Eve fell into sin and they hid in shame with fig leaves, their genital area. And it just makes me think of like, oh my goodness, God knew from the very beginning, the minute I fell into sin, I was going to be ashamed.
And the herpes virus was just a small like, consequence of that or like something that happened physically that a rash that comes about from intimacy when someone has multiple partners, but the hiding and the shame that came from that action was straight from Genesis and me wanting to hide from God and cover my body and cover the truth with with I always I just always think about that the fig leaf.
Juli (37:40.748)
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s, it’s all right there in the text. But I just want to end our conversation the same way we started it by just thanking you for your courage, and for being willing to let God use a painful part of your story and actually turn it into a victory, you know, and encouragement for other people that He is a God who brings redemption regardless of your story. So thank you.
Allie (38:09.122)
Yeah, you’re so welcome. I just, for anyone listening that was hoping, I just want to know, because on other podcasts, they’re like, okay, let’s, the how to, how to fix herpes, how to date, how to do this. And I’m so happy, Juli, that we folk, like, the how to fix it is God and turning back to God. So I think this was exactly what needed to be heard. But for anyone that is facing those things, just remember herpes, like you said, is a virus that’s been with humans forever. It’s small, is not detrimental, it is very manageable, and you can make it dormant in your body. So don’t lose hope is my ending message on that.
Juli (38:54.382)
Wow, that story is just such a powerful reminder that the diagnosis is just one part of the journey. That deeper battle is just the shame that follows that you have to live through. So I’d love to talk just a little bit about that, what we do with that shame and how we begin to move through it. Dr. Carol, you mentioned that you have some friends, a couple of friends who have lived with the herpes virus and you’ve also worked with many patients. What have you seen that really helps people work through that shame, particularly from a spiritual perspective?
Carol (39:28.238)
To embrace that Jesus is the answer. Herpes and other sexually transmitted infections may seem like a heavy burden, but to Jesus, it’s no heavier than any other aspect of our lives that we go through in this sinful world. Jesus does not look at you any differently whether or not you have a herpes diagnosis. He loves you. And to come to the point where you understand that this is first about the heart. All these other things matter, and sometimes they matter a lot as we live out our lives here, but it doesn’t change how God looks at you, and it doesn’t change what your life will be like in eternity. If I can think of how Jesus would have interacted with someone, wrestling with herpes or a similar diagnosis when he was here on earth, he would have just said, “come”.
Carol (40:26.28)
I can… almost guarantee, although we don’t know it for absolute fact, that there were people Jesus interacted with who had sexually transmitted infections when he was here on earth. We know he interacted with people who had multiple sexual partners. We know that STIs were present back then. So what was Jesus’ stance? Just like with every sinner, as we all are, come. You can come closer to me.
Juli (40:54.414)
Boy, that’s beautiful. It certainly seems like in our conversations in the church, we give the message of the gospel and God’s forgiveness, but I think there’s an unspoken feeling that some things are just too dirty or too big of a secret to confess and to receive Jesus’ forgiveness. But I think it’s so important when we talk about topics like this one to remember that God sees us as His children. He knows our brokenness.
And if I could encourage someone who might be walking through something like this, the first thing I would tell you is you need a safe place to be able to talk about it and tell the truth. You don’t have to be like Allie and start a company or a ministry or go on social media. Not everybody’s going to be called to do that. But you need to have a few trusted close friends and mentors around you that you can just be honest with, and not just what you’re experiencing, but also the shame that you’re carrying. Because when we bring things into the light, shame really can’t continue to grow. And that vulnerability is really what gets us out of a shame cycle.
Juli
And then I would also just encourage you to pursue your relationship with God, you know, in community, alone by yourself in prayer and Bible study. It’s one thing to be told that Jesus loves you and forgives you. It’s another thing to begin to truly experience that soul to soul on a spiritual level, that Jesus is not just out there forgiving the masses, but He sees you. And friend, if this is something that you’re dealing with, or maybe it’s not an STI or herpes, but it’s something else that you feel is so deeply shameful that you can’t shake, you know, our encouragement to you is you are not alone, that you have a community of people around you who have their own shame, their own secrets, and who need Jesus’s redemption and freedom as much as anyone. And so please don’t believe the enemies lie that you’re alone.
Dr. Carol, I want to thank you for being willing to join and add some of your expertise and encouragement with this conversation. We’re going to link to Dr. Carol’s website so that you can check out her resources as well as Allie’s website. Her website is livebeyondherpes.com and you can find those in your show notes.
Juli (43:14.808)
We’re also going to drop a few links of some of our Authentic Intimacy resources, some blogs and Q&A videos that we’ll dive deeper into some of the things that we talked about today. So you can always find those and a lot of other resources at authenticintimacy.com. But I just want to thank you for listening and I look forward to having coffee with you next time for more Java with Juli.