Cold Sores: A Small and Simple Parable

How cold sores helped me learn an eternal principle on a deeper level.

***Trigger warning: Yucky pictures of cold sores included***

One of the embarrassing and kind of gross things my body does as a response to stress is that I get cold sores.

Sometimes the stress is emotionally based; other times my body thinks that stress is what happens when I get too much sun (which, as a redhead, is easy to do).

I spent a great deal of my teenage years feeling mortified at the massive cold sores I would get. They would swell up my lips, scab over, and generally create unpleasantness for weeks at a time.

It was probably a good thing I didn't have any smooching partners at the time.

(Don't kiss someone who has a cold sore--my poor husband never got a cold sore until after we were married. Sorry, honey!)

From my teens into my adult years, I tried a few various remedies that helped mitigate the symptoms. None were life changing or transformative, but I found some help in avoiding certain chapstick brands, using sunscreen more regularly, good quality vitamins, and the power of a warm washcloth, which went a long way.

It was three years ago that I discovered my favorite cold sore treatment--Correct X. It's an ointment, similar to Neosporin, but essential-oils based. Putting this on my first cold sore felt like an absolute miracle--the cold sore stayed much smaller and more manageable, and I could smile without my lip cracking open and bleeding all over. It lasted only about half as long as they usually did, and healed with much less scarring.

I thought that maybe I just got lucky, and it happened to be a smaller cold sore, but consistently, Correct-X proved to make a difference in my experience.

I've continued to use Correct-X over the past three years any time I've gotten a cold sore.

Don't be fooled--I still get them. They still last anywhere from 5 days to a week at a time, and they're still painful.

But overall, the cold sores are MUCH more manageable while using this ointment. (I promise this isn't an ad for Correct-X. Bear with me for the metaphor!).

After using it so regularly, I started to kind of forget how bad cold sores used to be for me. I started losing my sense of awe of this incredible treatment. I wondered if maybe I'd just had a lower tolerance of pain and discomfort when I was younger, or maybe I'd just exaggerated how bad my cold sores were.

This wasn't by any means a focus of my life, just a quiet observation in the background of my mind every time it came up (which was about every other month or so).

This thought process continued until last fall, when I joined a cold sore study hosted by a local research hospital in an attempt to find a medically-based and effective cold sore treatment.

They stimulated a cold sore through a UV light that simulated a small sunburn, and my job was to take pictures of the cold sore as it progressed, along with checking in every other day. I couldn't use any treatments other than the one they gave me (which was basically the same one that's been sold in stores since I was a young girl and not remotely effective), and needed to use that treatment on a regimented schedule, at least 5 times daily.

GUYS.

This cold sore was AWFUL.

I'm going to include a picture because I'm married to a nurse and oozing sores kinda fascinate me, but warning: it's bad.

This was Day 6 or so of the study. I won't share any more grotesque pictures like this one, but suffice it to say that I spent two full weeks sporting this thing on my upper lip. It stayed about that size--or bigger--almost the entire time and was pretty dang painful.

Last week, I felt a cold sore coming on. This was the first one I'd had since doing the study, and I did NOT want to experience that again, so I went back to my typical regimen of putting Correct-X on, a few times a day.

Just look at the difference!

I don't know if you can even tell, but the bottom left lip is more swollen than the other side. It also had a little scab that showed up and bled when it dried out.

It's not comfortable. I'm on day 6 now and can tell it's almost gone.

But holy cow. Seeing the contrast was a pretty efficient way to help my brain realize that my efforts and treatments actually WERE making a difference. And if they were making a difference when it came to cold sores, what other differences was I dismissing?

Sometimes when I'm engaged in "small and simple" habits--reading my scriptures daily, listening to conference talks while driving, saying my prayers out loud--it can be easy to dismiss those efforts as ineffective because they're small.

After all, I still get frustrated when I'm stuck in traffic. My kids still fight. I still have hard mornings where I don't want to get out of bed.

Sometimes my brain worries that if life isn't all sunshine and rainbows when I'm engaged in those important but small behaviors, maybe it means that those behaviors aren't making a difference.

Just like my brain started to think that maybe I was exaggerating the effectiveness of this ointment and maybe cold sores had always been this way. After all, the cold sores still came. They were still painful. And they still lasted for a week, which is longer than not coming at all.

But when I get the opportunity to contrast cold sores with Correct-X versus cold sores without, the difference is clear.

I want to remember that life is never going to be free of opposition. That's the whole point of why I came here, after all. But if I can have more joy and less pain through choosing to cultivate helpful thoughts, care for my body, feed myself spiritually on a daily and weekly basis, connect to my Savior through covenants, and serve those around me in love, well, then, it's worth making the effort, even if it's a small one.

And even if I don't see immediate or obvious results, I can trust that results are happening all around me.

What small, incremental change can I choose to make today that will have an impact?

Maybe sitting with my kids and playing a card game instead of turning on the TV.

Maybe walking to the mailbox instead of driving.

Maybe it's just deciding to say a prayer instead of letting unhelpful thoughts spiral.

Change doesn't have to be grand or even all that hard to be effective-maybe even eternal in nature.

"Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

"And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about His great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord...bringeth about the salvation of many souls."

~Alma 37:6-7

The greatest miracles I've ever witnessed have been the ones to happen within my own heart and mind. God loves small efforts--and rewards them generously.