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.