Authors: Vacirca Vaughn
The Makeover
| The Makeover |
| Vacirca Vaughn |
| (2012) |
Phoenix Jean-Baptiste is a thirty-three-year-old Haitian-American psychologist. In spite of her ability to assist others with their life struggles, she is unable to help herself through crippling low self-esteem and depression. Phoenix’s misery stems from the belief that she is too ugly to ever be loved. She is, after all, sixty pounds overweight, suffering from adult acne, and a poor dresser. As far as she is concerned, her misshapen body, damaged dark skin, and awkwardness are the reason her life is a mess. Why else would her fiancé cheat on her two months before their wedding, telling her that he only proposed because she financially supported him for two years?
After a two-week drinking binge that nearly ends in her suicide, Phoenix desperately, cries out to God. Phoenix, a backslidden Christian, doesn't understand that there is a spiritual battle going on between God and Satan for her soul. God hears Phoenix’s cry and sends her the help she requests in the form of Paulo Elias.
Paulo is a kind, handsome, Brazilian man, who talks about God like
He’s an old friend. Paulo lives for Christ, is an anointed prayer warrior, who serves on his church’s Intercessory Prayer Ministry. God lays it on Paulo’s heart to begin praying for Phoenix long before they officially meet. After meeting Phoenix, Paulo ministers to Phoenix about salvation through Jesus Christ, while offering kindness. He also offers to use his skills as a certified personal trainer to help Phoenix lose weight. All Phoenix has ever wanted was to become beautiful so she could find love. While Phoenix undergoes a makeover of the body, Paulo tries to minister to her about receiving a makeover of the soul.
Paulo, in the course of being used by God to help Phoenix, falls in love with her. God reveals to Paulo that Phoenix is meant to become his wife. As Phoenix becomes more beautiful on the outside, she becomes bitter, arrogant, and self-absorbed on the inside. She wants revenge against her ex-fiancé, Cedric. She desires to become beautiful so she can win back her ex and break his heart.
Can Phoenix let go of the past in order to move ahead with Paulo? Can Paulo help Phoenix receive the true makeover God has for her through Jesus Christ? Will God win this spiritual battle and bring forth His will in the lives of Paulo and Phoenix?
The Makeover is a novel that brings forth a message of hope to readers. This novel testifies to the awesome love of God that everyone can have through Jesus Christ. Most of all, it will remind readers that even as man may focus on one’s outer appearance, God is truly concerned with our hearts.
THE MAKEOVER
By
Vacirca
V. Vaughn
AMAZON
EDITION
PUBLISHED BY:
Vacirca
V. Vaughn on Amazon
The Makeover
Text copyright © 2012
Vacirca
V.
Vaughn
All Rights Reserved
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Your support and respect for
the property of this author is appreciated.
This book is a
work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places,
events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions
of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
The Makeover
Dedication
First and foremost,
all glory and thanks goes to the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ, who died
for all of our sins. Thank You Father God for restoring me to Your
purpose for my life, through Jesus. Thank You Holy Spirit for gifting me
this parable which is designed to entertain, even as it preaches the
Gospel. Let it be fruitful and multiply. Thanks to the pastoral
staff at Times Square Church in New York City for leading us according to the
Word of God. Many thanks to J.J. Murray for all of your feedback and writing
lessons. Thanks to my friends for your encouragement and support as I
took a leap of faith to start writing again after ten years in the mental
health industry: Anthony, Georgiana, Tatiana, Alex, and the rest of my
VNS peoples. Thank you Altar Workers Intercessory Prayer Ministry for
your intercessions on my behalf, and Ms. Catherine for being my spiritual
mom. Thank you,
Momita
(my mother Marie Mimosa
Vaughn) for your patience and support. Thanks to Marvin for being the
brother who spends hours listening, even when he couldn’t care less about what
I’m rambling about. Thanks
Zulay
, for allowing
me to practice my writing skills on you.
Please note
that I use scriptures at the beginning of each chapter. Most of the
scriptures were taken from the New Living Translation, while others were taken
from the New International Version.
This “parable”
is near and dear to my heart because it addresses two major issues in my
life: self-esteem and prayer. As a woman who has battled with the
bulge, I know what it’s like to struggle with such issues. As an
intercessory prayer warrior who serves on that ministry in church, I know what
it’s like to face spiritual battles that only prayer can overcome. For
most, I pray this work will inspire you all to remember to pray. For
others, I pray it inspires you to take good care of your bodies, which God has
trusted to you. For all, I pray it draws you closer to Jesus
Christ. God bless you all.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Maybe God
has a reason for making me so ugly,
she thought.
I’ve always
wanted to be beautiful. Why did He make me like this?
As she
had every night since he left, she was standing in front of her lighted vanity
mirror, as if in a trance. Her eyes skimmed her face, every blemish a
wound in her spirit. She turned her face from right to left and
stared at the raisin-colored cheeks. The rough texture of her scarred
skin caused her eyes to well up with tears.
She took off
her nightgown and looked at her chest, dotted with faded brown spots, reminders
of her adolescent chicken pox. Her eyes traveled up and down the
roadmap her stretch marks had drawn over her shoulders, arms, and protruding belly.
That’s the
roadmap to hell tattooed on my body.
Her eyes reddened as the bitter
thought ricocheted through her heart.
Her fingers
traced the beige squiggles. She touched her breasts, one short and full,
the other long and thin, marveling at how they could sag so much at her age of
thirty-three. “And I haven’t had kids yet!”
She turned to
the side and watched her belly hang down like an apron over her legs. Her
stomach was large, as round and bulky as any woman who was expecting a child within
the next few weeks. Many times, whenever she chose yet another
unflattering outfit, people would often ask her when she was expecting.
Too embarrassed to correct them, she would simply allow herself to get caught
in the fantasy that she
was
expecting her first child, and that there
was a husband at home who loved her and was just as excited as she was.
Other times she would tell people that her stomach was that huge because she’d
just had a baby.
As it often
did, her heart broke as she compared the proportions of her huge, rippling
belly to her exceedingly slender hips, bowl-shaped behind, and long flat
feet. “God, if I didn’t look like this, maybe then he would have loved
me, would have appreciated me.”
Her lips
trembled as they curled in disgust.
“You really
didn’t give me anything to work with, did you God? If You were going to
give me bad skin, at least You could have given me a nice shape! I have
done everything possible to get myself to lose this weight, to get my skin
clear. But look at me. Why when I gain weight it is all in one
area? What do they call it? An apple shape? Humph. The
apple that is the downfall of every woman, isn’t it?”
Defeated, she
snatched her eyes away from the mirror, unable to look further.
“Who would want
me looking like this?” she shouted at the ceiling.
Not getting an
answer, as usual, she walked over to her bed, grabbed her bottle of vodka and
drank until the revulsion in her stomach settled. She felt the liquor
burn away the helplessness. The feeling of being invisible, in a world
where women were valued by their beauty first, was burned away by the
fire. She drank away the conviction that she would always be alone
because of something she could not control.
As the liquor
blurred the sharp angles and images of emotion, it did not dull the
thoughts. It was all God’s fault. He knew it. And
she knew it. If the pity in everyone’s eyes was any indication, they all
knew it too.
Wow, she
really wasn’t blessed in the looks department, was she?
Their eyes would
whisper.
She hated
looking into the eyes of people. She hated knowing that they had already
made a decision about her before she opened her mouth to speak an intelligent
word.
“I hate how
everyone treats me, God!” she screamed before taking another swig.
But even the
liquor was powerless to keep her mind in that numb place where it was
acceptable to blame others for her problems.
Even as her
drink fought against the thoughts, the fear remained. It was a
constant nightmare of being trapped in a body she would never escape from.
And Fear became
her lover that night, replacing the one that had walked away. Fear’s
fingers traced the lines on her arms. It caressed the dimples in her legs
and the fleshy parts of her stomach. Fear whispered things in her ear,
telling her that no one would ever love her. Not even the God that had
made her.
“God, I know
You don’t love me,” she slurred. “Who could possibly love me when I look
like this?” she whispered, as she passed out on her empty floor.
Part I—The
Challenge
Again
there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the
Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. And
the Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Then Satan answered the
Lord and said, “From roaming about on the earth, and walking around on it.”
(Job 2:1-2)
The Lord said
to His fallen son, Satan, “What brings you here?”
Satan sauntered
to the Throne, his face fixed in a rigid sneer. “I have come to claim
what’s mine, once and for all. You intend to bless this…Paulo with a
wife?”