Welcome to the Femina podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. Thanks for joining me today. We live in a

large community of saints, and so we have many causes for joy and celebration, like weddings,

births, graduations, so forth. We also have many instances of sorrow and grief.

And sometimes these two extremes can occur really closely together. So important that we learn to

govern our hearts so that we're equipped by the Lord to rejoice with those who rejoice and grieve with those who are

mourning. But our human hearts are frail, and we can become overwhelmed, discouraged, worried,

and disappointed, or we can become inflated with excitement and joy and become carried away with

those emotions. The goal is to maintain equilibrium in Christ,

not stoicism, but truly joyful and truly sorrowful, all while trusting the Lord. Sometimes a sort of

deflation happens after a lot of excitement. After some really good news, there can be what seems

like an unaccountable feeling of being down. This is a common result of being too elated, not

governing your emotions when they're soaring too high. The only possible after effect will be a sudden

dip. Our hearts cannot sustain the ups and downs,

and we can become overwhelmed. The goal is to maintain a steady trust in the Lord,

weathering the highs and the lows. But that does not mean flat, with no emotions on either side.

It simply means governing our emotions when you have good

news and not allowing them to soar too high and then governing your emotions when they come down for a

landing and not letting them crash and burn. In the same way, sorrow should not overwhelm us,

but we must learn to cast our cares on him and receive

comfort from the Holy Spirit to help us shepherd our griefs. We can, of course, look to other

Christians, our friends and pastors and saints from the past who have learned these lessons

and glean wisdom from them on how to steward both joy and grief.

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