This Used to be my specialty, Part III

So Factor Three is just a fancy shmancy name for something I've come up with on my own.  Something I discovered, and frankly never factored in.  It's the unexpected factor in all of this.  The big surprise.

No, I don't have a deep feeling of closeness to God as I always have.
No, I don't have a blind and joyful faith that I have always had.
No, I'm still not sure I believe prayer makes any difference anymore.

But I suddenly do have other people.  I'm not sure how to describe this, but it's like, when all those other people I've prayed for all my life were sick, it was like they needed MY faith to uphold them.  And now I am sick, in trouble and weakened spiritually, and suddenly I'm being uphelp by all of their faiths. 

They are praying for me and offering Masses and sufferings for me.  I have fourty choir children offering up sacrifices for me.  One mother came up to me and told me of how her four year old daughter Gianna fell and scraped her knee.  When mommy asked if she was okay, the girl replied "It's okay mommy, I offered it up for Mrs. N."  Gianna is upholding me somehow.   

When I told Pam I was afraid the chemo wasn't working, she said "Who cares about the chemo?!  Jesus Christ will heal you!"  Pam's faith is stronger than mine right now.  Pam is upholding me somehow.

I'm not sure I can effectively explain all of this - I think it is another one of those mysteries of faith that we'll never quite understand or at least not until Heaven.  But I know it is true.  I am weak now, but those who love me are strong and are rallying for me, for my life and for my soul.  I don't feel close to God, but I feel this so deeply, so confidently that it touches my heart very much and it almost replaces the comfort of faith.  I am upheld by the community of God.  Even in faith we are not alone.

This used to be my specialty, Part II

I remember a couple years ago reading about some newly discovered letters of Mother Theresa which disclosed honestly her complete lack of feeling anything close to God for the last twenty some years of her life.  Many people misunderstood this as a sign of her being a fake.  Intellectually I understood that this discovery would bring her closer to Sainthood, but emotionally I had no idea just how dark a dark hour could be. 

I guess right now I feel like I'm going through my "dark hour of the soul" with faith.  It's not that I don't believe.  I do.  I don't have any doubts about my beliefs either.  It's just that I don't have any assurance of Him or His love.  I feel very alone and empty.  Which is a very interesting dilemma.  At this time, the scariest time of my life so far, shouldn't my faith be upholding me?  Isn't this why I've invested all those years of prayer, study and church?  If not for this than what?  What's the point of faith if at the first sign of struggle one collapses like a flower in the wind?

My grandfather used to say that religion is of the will and not of the emotion.  Perhaps the reality is not that I've lost my faith, but that faith is not what I thought it to be.  Perhaps what I was experiencing my whole life, a feeling of joyful contentedness, constant comfort and companionship, perhaps these things are just feelings, emotions, as fleeting as a young lovers passion.  And feelings are not the substance of faith.  Feelings are just beautiful flowers blowing in the wind.  They blow here and there and die and grow in season, but they are fickle. 

So faith is an unknown substance.  Here I had listened to that Gospel Parable all my life about building my house on solid ground and thought "I've built my house on solid ground."  Now I look to see in the first heavy rain that the grounding I thought I had is washing away in the tide. . . but there is another foundation under my fortress, holding it up against the wind and rain. . . there is another, better foundation.  I will call it Factor Three.