Celebrating life and God’s grace: The journey of one woman living with HIV

Sharon Thomas was infected with HIV in 1987 and diagnosed in 1988. It was rare for women to contract HIV. She was devastated, believing she would never live to see another day.

Now 67 years old, Thomas lives in the Cleveland, Ohio, area. She happily reports she’s been living with HIV for 30 years and is celebrating this incredible milestone!

Thanks be to God!

Her diagnosis came during an era where HIV felt like a death sentence. Indeed, many suffered horrific deaths. Upon receiving her diagnosis, Thomas found herself feeling insecure with low self-esteem.

However, in time, she summoned her strength to face the demons head-on. She became her best advocate. One could compare her to the “tenacious widow” in the Gospel of Luke (18:1-8).

The widow demanded justice from the judge over and over until the judge heard her plea. Almost immediately after her diagnosis, Thomas was assigned a counselor and enrolled in an ongoing clinical study for people living with HIV. That gave her access to the latest drug treatments for HIV, which somewhat held at bay her fear of dying.

Going public with one’s HIV status back then — and even today — can be risky. People living with HIV or AIDS were — and are — stigmatized on various levels of society.

In 1990, Thomas took that bold step of sharing her status when serving as a panelist at the first national AIDS conference in San Francisco, California.

“I thought my dreams were lost forever, but God continued to give me life. I don’t want to waste anything,” she shared.

Living was not, however, without heartbreaks and hardships: headaches, small lesions on her body, battling alcoholism, attempting suicide and losing her home. Life’s complexities were exacerbated by the death of her boyfriend in 1989.

As time passed, she began reclaiming her early Christian teachings, remembering the lessons from Sunday School and other messages of hope, love and peace.

In a 2006 journal entry, she wrote “Living with HIV is unheard of among women. I took a leap of faith and put my face on an issue that is unbearable — I spoke honestly.”

In a later entry, Thomas expressed profound gratitude to having witnessed things she never dreamed possible: her daughter turning 21 and graduating from college, the fall of the Berlin wall, sobriety, another Christmas.

Thomas has emerged from the ashes and is not just surviving but thriving.

Jesus’s commandment to love one another was indelibly imprinted in her DNA. She lives out Christ’s command through service as a national public speaker, caregiver for others who were infected, director for a nonprofit AIDS organization and volunteer with several AIDS-related initiatives. Compassion for others living with HIV led Thomas to become a leading force in organizing the annual AIDS Healing Weekends in the West Ohio Annual Conference.

“This weekend provides HIV-positive men and women a safe place where they can share their feelings of loneliness, their hopes and dreams, and it doesn’t matter who you are,” reports Thomas. “Your insides can come out!”

The institutional church is not perfect and has been a perpetrator of stigma against LGBTQ persons as well as those who have contracted HIV. But, it also can bring healing, hope and transformation to those who are marginalized.

“The church needs to address the issue of sexuality and provide sex education to young people and older adults,” suggests Thomas. She is an active, longtime member of Franklin Circle Christian Church in Cleveland where she lives out her faith with gusto!

We celebrate Thomas’ remarkable journey of 30 years living with a virus that has taken the lives of well over 30 million people.

The work continues!