happy happy joy joy

     Isn't it hard not to take on other people's burdens?  I love my husband so much--more than life itself.  He is grieving his Mom's terminal illness.  I feel for him so much.  How exactly does God want me to feel for him, though?  There are bad alternatives everywhere I look.  There is is enmeshment on one hand, and indifference on the other.  How do I get it right?  What is compassion that doesn't lose its footing?
     Ron and I have discussed it.  He says that inside, he is pretty firm, and other people stay on the periphery for him.  But, he says, I seem to collapse easily for others.  So if I am happy but then someone close to me becomes upset, I am soon no longer happy as I feel for them.  Ron has encouraged me to "firm up" on the inside.  "What is so firm on the inside?"  I ask him.  "What does God want to see in my center, so that I keep my footing around others?"  Ron said he did not know.  
     It was that question that led me to the thought: God has made all of us royalty through our baptism and through becoming part of His family.  We are all little queens, princesses, and princes ( Peter 2:9).  Through our life as Christians, we are to imitate Christ as "priest, prophet and king."  Finally I had some sense of God's desire for me: I am to be His little queen!  
     Somehow, that idea just filled me right up to the brim.  I have been SO STEADY in the past days and even weeks, since this insight.  Ron is sort of amazed, as he has seen me withstand some storms that I was not withstanding just weeks ago.  I think of it as giving me a deep, deep keel.  I am steady through the storm--by the grace of God!