trusting through doubt

Somehow

If I am honest, I seldom feel the presence of God in prayer or elsewhere.  If I am genuine, I often come to prayer to the absence of a sense that God met me tenderly in return.  If I am sincere, I frequently come to  meet with God in a hidden place. Yet here is the crazy part!  My heart is continually drawn to that hidden place.  I constantly desire to meet with God in prayer.  Though I rarely feel the presence of God like I do a hug from my wife or the voice of a friend, my heart...SOMETHING within me yearns for prayer.  Though I cannot point to a particular sensible feeling of God's consistent presence, I know, SOMEHOW, that when I come to God and expose my senses, my thoughts, feelings, and circumstances without any cosmetic, God smiles.

I cannot pinpoint it, but somewhere and somehow I know that my Father loves me.  I realize that God is beyond my senses. He is beyond my mind.  But when my heart yearns for and desires to keep coming back to that hidden and shrouded place, I realize SOMETHING is happening that is so deep and far enough beyond me that my prayers are always being heard whether or not I FEEL Abba's embrace.