dancing in an empty room

Christina Perri sings a song called "Lonely."

The lyrics are as follows:

2 am, where do I begin?
Crying off my face again,
The silent sound of loneliness
Wants to follow me to bed


I'm the ghost of a girl that I want to be most.
I'm the shell of a girl that I used to know well


Dancing slowly in an empty room,
Can the lonely take the place of you?
I sing myself a quiet lullaby,
Let you go and let the lonely in
To take my heart again.


Too afraid to go inside
for the pain of one more loveless night
For the loneliness will stay with me
And hold me till I fall asleep


I'm the ghost of a girl that I want to be most
I'm the shell of a girl that I used to know well


Dancing slowly in an empty room,
Can the lonely take the place of you?
I sing myself a quiet lullaby,
Let you go and let the lonely in
To take my heart again.


Broken pieces of 
a barely breathing story
Where there once was love
Now there's only me
And a lonely 


Dancing slowly in an empty room,
Can the lonely take the place of you?
I sing myself a quiet lullaby,
Let you go and let the lonely in
To take my heart again.


Before you leap to too many conclusions, no, I am not going through a messy breakup.

Tonight I related to this song on an entirely different, more abstract level.  Spiritually speaking, if I am going to be completely honest, I feel as if I dance in an empty room, a room that used to be full of joy and hope.  "Where there once was love, now there's only me and a lonely room..."  At some point I stopped pursuing an emotional faith as evidence of God.  On the one hand, I think it gave me a deeper appreciation for the core of what it means to have faith.  My faith is about living it out more so than feelings anymore.

But I miss the feeling...I miss feeling as if God was right there with me.  It's hard for me to adjust to living with this new style of faith I have embraced.  It's hard to be in relationship with God when I no longer am sure how He speaks.  It used to be that I took my emotion as the Holy Spirit.  I no longer do so, and it makes for an excruciatingly "lonely room" at times.  It's not that I don't want to trust my emotions.  I do want to trust them, for riding an emotional high made some aspects of my childhood extremely joyful.  When God was near, I was untouchable...

It's hard for me to be honest about the "state of my faith" at times, I think mostly because for so many years my faith was characterized by mountains and valleys.  Now it's just a flatland.  Not high, not low of all lows. Just an enduring belief that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died to redeem the world from sin and an abiding desire to serve Him with everything I am.  Despite this belief, skepticism follows me in the day to day.  I'm never really free from it, and although I have learned to deal with it, I sometimes feel like I have failed entirely to follow God as I should.

I just wish that my emotions would catch up someday.  Maybe not in the same way they interacted with the belief system of my childhood, but at least in a way that didn't leave me feeling entirely disconnected.

I'm looking forward so much to being done with school at the end of this week.  I need time to just think about all of this.  I need time to process all that has changed in me in the last few years.  I need to deal with the skepticism, with the scars.  I need to seek God earnestly, although my approach may be entirely new to me...

I'm clinging to hope that this "lonely room" is only temporary.  That at the end of this winding tunnel is peace and clarity.