Beauty: A Fallacy in My Thinking AND Roommates Part 5 of 6

This probably not news to most of you, and it is most certainly not news to me, but I've never though of myself as a beautiful, or even a slightly pretty person. I've just never had that sort of confidence. I've had days or moments when I felt pretty but as a whole, I've never seen myself this way. But as of late, I have come to realize... Or instead let's say that I have been beat over the head with the fact that this is a lie. That it is a fallacy in my thinking and it needs to stop because God is not pleased with the way I've always seen myself.
Here's where the fallacy comes in: It is sort of like the "if/then statements" that you learn about in high school geometry-- like "All 4 sided shapes are quadrilaterals. IF all 4 sided shapes are quadrilaterals and a square has 4 sides THEN it must be a quadrilateral. But in this case it goes something like this:
Everything God makes is beautiful. IF everything God makes is beautiful and God made me, THEN I must be beautiful, too.
I have believed for quite some time that everything that God makes is beautiful. And I apply that to nature, and to other people and to music and to everything I can think of except for myself. Somehow I've always managed to exclude myself from the everything. And in the past it has been pointed out to me that this is an insult to God. And even though I always knew this in my head, I could never translate that to my heart. But recently my head and my heart have started to find agreement-- I have started to recognize, with the help of many people I love, that I am not the exception. God did not make everything beautiful EXCEPT for me... I am included in EVERYTHING.
*************************************************************************************
Roommates Part 5 of 6 - The Extremist
The Extremist was the most... let's just say interesting... of the Christian roommates I've had. We'll call her Dawn for the sake of the story. That is not, of course, her real name.
Dawn was, as I said before, a friend of a friend who moved into our three bedroom apartment on the day of my graduation ceremony. She did not have a car, but she borrowed her mother's for the move. We later found out that she also did not have a bed. Apparently she sold these things a few months prior because she wanted to live more simply. She told us that she wanted to sleep on the floor so that she could more easily relate to the suffering that was felt by persecuted Christians where they are not free to worship Jesus. We just nodded and smiled and went with it for the time being.
So for about a week after Dawn moved in, she slept on the floor and so on. But then one night I came home from work at about 2:30 am and there she was, sleeping on the futon in the living room. So much for getting a little snack before bed. This continued for about a month until she finally went out and bought a futon of her very own. Well, actually I think her mom bought her bed because she wasn't working at the time, but whatever...
During this same period of time that she was sleeping on the floor/living room futon, she was also doing the Daniel Fast as a full time diet. She would concoct strange soups in my slow cooker and leave them in there for days. All the while she would nibble on whatever food Becca and I had purchased for ourselves. Actually perhaps nibble is not the proper word. One time she ate a half a loaf of wheat bread in one sitting. Another time she ate a box of taco shells-- just the shells. And still another time she consumed a container of DRY OATMEAL. She said that she was doing the Daniel Fast because she had a wheat allergy, but she kept eating our wheat products in mass quantities. At one point she accused me of being a bad Christian sister. She told me that by buying wheat products and keeping them in the house, that I was causing her to stumble. Because apparently she was never supposed to have to develop self control.
Ah, and if only this is where the entertainment ended. But alas, there is still more to be said about Dawn. During that summer, the fifth Harry Potter book came out. Now I know it's not uncommon for Christians to be opposed to Harry Potter, and I'm fine with that. But when the fifth Harry Potter book came out, Becca and I had my niece, who was 11 at the time, come with us to the release party and then spend the night at our place. The next morning Dawn comes out of her bedroom, asks what we did the night before, and the instant that we tell her she goes into a rant about the evils of Harry Potter and how I am corrupting my niece and she can't believe that I would be such a bad influence on her-- all of this in front of my niece. Then when after her grandma came to take her home, the lecture began. She pulled out her Bible and started reading me verses and following me around the apartment ranting about how horrible Harry Potter is. I asked her if she'd ever read any of the books to which she responded with a resounding NO-- at which point I asked her to kindly butt out because she had no idea what she was talking about. I told her that her issues are not always going to be mine and she needed to just deal with it. Eventually she left me alone on the matter.
And now for the final piece of entertainment for this tale-- I guess this roommate is more a series of stories rather than one continuous one-- the trip to the emergency room.
So shortly after Dawn's 30th birthday, we had planned a trip to go to Great America for Joyfest-- I invited her because I didn't want to go alone. At the time, I was working the 4:00pm -12:30am shift and had split days off. In order to accommodate for my trip, I had to switch shifts with a coworker, which put me in the position of having to work a long shift on the Wednesday before we left. So instead of my usual 4:00 start time, I had started at noon that day. By the time I got home, I was exhausted and I went to bed immediately. I barely even took the time to change into my pajamas before falling asleep.
About an hour after I fell asleep, there was a pounding on my bedroom door. And then another. Then a yell-- "Jeni! Jeni! I think I need to go to the hospital. Jeni? Can you hear me?" And then some more pounding. After a couple of minutes I'm able to drag myself out of bed, and there is Dawn outside of my door with a blood soaked towel wrapped around her finger. So I put some shoes on-- I was not about to change out of my pajamas-- and we headed for the hospital. Turns out, Dawn had cut off her finger tip while cutting an apple. As we left the apartment, I couldn't help but notice that all of the lights were out in the apartment. I thought it was strange that she would turn out the lights after cutting herself-- but of course this is not what happened. She cut her fingertip off while cutting an apple IN THE DARK because she was "afraid that she would wake us up" if she turned on the light. Eh, whatever. So while we're on the way to the hospital, she tells me that we will have to throw away the towel. And the sponge in the sink. And we should probably bleach the sink, the knife and the cutting board. Because Dawn had Hepatitis B, which is spread through the blood-- so we needed to make sure that there was no blood lingering anywhere.
So we go to the hospital and I hang out in the waiting room while Dawn gets her finger taken care of. And by the time I get home, I am COMPLETELY wiped out-- but not so wiped out that I forget to babysit her while she tosses the towel, sponge and APPLE and takes them to the dumpster then bleaches the sink, knife and cutting board.
Fortunately, a month later our lease was up and Becca and I decided that the apartment in Lemmon Valley was no longer the place for us. And since Dawn's parents lived in Stead, she decided to go back to their house. And on Thanksgiving Day (yes, again!) Becca and I moved to an apartment in Sparks where my brother joined us. Turns out my brother was the BEST roommate I ever had. Who would have thought?