Can't Feel My Faith

 I've been an outcast my entire life. It's not a bad thing necessarily it's just a fact about my interpretation of my life. I spent a great deal of time trying to fit in. Never quite getting there. It's only been recently that I've learned I was never made to fit in. That's not my calling. What I've always thought were defects or setbacks have been some of the greatest tools God has ever given me. It took time to realize that though and I'm certain others like me aren't there yet. I have aspergers and didn't know until adulthood so I can only look back and heal my childhood self in retrospect. I wondered in my early years as a Christian just as I wondered as a child "What's wrong with me?" "Why am I not like (insert cooler person's name here) ." especially in church. I grew up in a non denominational megachurch and I felt more like an outcast there than at school and that's saying something. I had "too many questions" "not enough faith" why couldn't I just "repent and believe"  and I just couldn't. I lost what faith I did have. After several years of bad decisiins and general debauchery I found my faith again. I accepted Jesus and gave Him my all. I got saved at a Pentecostal church and for the first time I felt like God was real that He was there. It lasted a whole hour. I started thinking I was a fake. I couldn't doubt God anymore I knew He was real but I doubted my own faith my own heart. I felt so dry, I felt so numb. I watched as everyone had these miraculous, joyous, wild free moments with The Lord while I waited to feel just a shiver. I started hearing those same thoughts "you're faithless" "you've commited the unpardonable sin." When I found out I had aspergers it was like a spring in the arrid wasteland of my soul. I realized ever real experience I had with God was a miracle in and of itself. I finally knew why when they sang "When we all get to Heaven" I couldn't picture it. I long for it but I still can't picture it. I learned most of all, though, that feeling isn't everything. Feeling isn't faith. Feeling isn't love. A man can love his wife and feel distant or angry or hurt. Love is something beyond those feelings. It's staying the course when it's hard it's realizing that at the end of the day your commitment even in the worst moments is still the right choice. It's the same with God. I'd imagine from both His and our perspectives. I know God's there even when I don't feel it. I know He loves me even when it seems like everything is against me. The more I realize what God has done and who I am to Him I realize a feeling is cheap. I'd trade a million "Hallelujah Meetings" for those times in my life that God has shown me His love. When I read the Psalms I see David, Solomon, Asaph, and many others of great faith experience great sorrow, great spiritual dryness, pain, anger, doubt yet still hold fast to the idea that God is with them through it all. My wife is still my wife even if I don't see her, feel her, hear her, or if we're apart. She doesnt cease to exist just because I've left the room. The same goes for God. He's still my God. All of those things that once made me feel distant or that make me different from my fellow Christians is also what has given me acloser relationship with God. A closer relationship with my fellow man. I wanted so bad to fit in but God has shown me it's in my differences that I make most of a difference in His Kingdom and at the end of the day that's what truly matters.