Are you a helper of joy?

A few months ago I was at a local restaurant having dinner with an amazing group of women friends. The food was good, the conversation was awesome (as it always is when these women get together)! What I remember most about that night, is that at some point during the conversation, every woman sitting at that table said they felt that if people knew the “real” them, those people wouldn't like them. I remember it so vividly because I had two very different reactions to these statements. I thought, “Oh, cool, it's nice to know I'm not the only one who feels that way about myself.”, but at the same time I thought, “What are you talking about, you all are wonderful, amazing women, I'm the only horrible person at this table.” Thinking about my reactions on the way home from dinner that night, I realized, my friends, my mom and sister, were probably having very similar reactions to mine.

The weeks passed and I just couldn't get that conversation out of my mind. I decided I would try and write a poem about it, because I used to enjoy writing poetry and was, I think, pretty good at it. I even had a great line for the end of each section, “They only like the me I'm pretending to be”. (Awesome, right?) I wrote two sections, read them out loud to mom and realized they sounded like a really bad Dr. Seuss imitation and scrapped the project. I was dealing with deep, raw emotions and putting them down in rhyming verse just seemed to me to be a bit too.... silly. At least that's what I told myself. If I'm being perfectly honest, the real reason I scrapped the project is because I was afraid. You see, God had given me the last line to the poem and when I realized what I would have to feel and let go of to get from my beginning, “They only like the me I'm pretending to be,” to His ending, “Oh my child, why cant you see. You are exactly who I created you to be.” it freaked me out a bit.

A few more weeks passed. I was reading in my bible and came across the scripture 2 Corinthians 1:24 which says: “Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand.” I'm sure that when most people read that scripture they focus on the “by faith ye stand” part, but the phrase that caught me was “helpers of your joy”. I started wondering what it means to be a helper of joy, how does one go about becoming a helper of joy, what joy? I looked up the word in the dictionary and found it does mean what I thought it did, “the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires “. I kept looking down the page and came across the synonyms section, the first one listed there is beatitude. The definition for beatitude, other than being a part of the Sermon on the Mount, is “a state of utmost bliss”. I then looked up the word bliss which means “complete happiness, Paradise, Heaven”. All this led me right back to the bible, the Beatitudes to be specific, I pulled up Bible Gateway on my computer, found the passage and added parallel versions. (In general I prefer KJV but sometimes reading the same scripture in a couple different translation helps me understand it better.) I love the way this part sounds in the KJV, it's almost identical in the NIV, but when I read the interpretation in The Message Bible, OH MY GOODNESS!!

Matthew 5:3-12

The Message (MSG)

3 “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
4 “You’re blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
5 “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
6 “You’re blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
7 “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.
8 “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
9 “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.
10 “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.
11-12 “Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.


There is no way for me to adequately describe the mountains of emotional junk that crumbled away as I read these definitions and scriptures. I guess what it all comes down to is realizing that I'm ok, exactly as I am because God is there, He is guiding me through everything and helping me become exactly who he intended me to be. He's shown me that by listening to Him, but doing something as simple as calling someone I've been thinking about all day, by mailing a card to someone – just because, by listening to someone else's worries, or by just hugging someone who looks like they need it, I really can be a “helper of joy”.


Finally, to the women of “The Circle”, both those who were sitting at the table that night and those who weren't. When I read the verses from the Beatitudes, your lovely faces come to mind. Whether you realize it or not, you have been there for me when I've been at the end of my rope, when I've been persecuted, and when I've lost. You've been care-full and allowed me to care for you. You've been helping me be content with just who I am, work up a good appetite for God, and overall get my inside world – mind and heart – put right. You are my beautiful beatitudes, you are my “Helpers of Joy”