Barbie Loflin

I do not even know where to begin.To say that this has overtaken me would be a grave understatement.For, I cannot begin to fathom and fully plumb the depths of what God has been doing in this battered heart of mine.I am humbled and exhilarated, weepy and caught up in hilarity; I shake my head at what I cannot put my finger on but know full well is there.I suppose, most plainly put, I have fallen in love with Him.I know, already there are those taking issue with the words fallen in love, for that implies an eventual rising out of love.Ah, but this falling has taken some forty-one years, and I do not feel the rising as of yet. Quite to the contrary, I feel the wind on my face as I fall faster and deeper.The world spins by me as my gaze locks with His and I no longer fight this pull toward My Beloved.

I have never wanted anything like I want Him; never longer for anything like I long for His Presence.I did not mean to.I did not set out to lose myself.I merely thought to like Him enough to make Him like me.Too late I learned it does not work that way.A gentle wooing, birthed of profound love has set a fire within these bones, and I would have been consumed had I not finally found my face to His chest, my ear to His heartbeat, my breath mingled with His.

Though I do not wish to frighten you with words that evoke such intimate images, I must tell you what I have found in His Presence… this purest of intimacy.His is the take-your-breath-away kind of touch.His is the voice that speaks and drenches your soul with Myrrh, leaving you quite undone.His beauty, fierce and humbling, is that of which dreams could never be made, for He is beyond human dream and thought.He is piercing in intensity, yet completely consuming in His loveliness.

Oh, my friend, I do not know how to write about tears that fall because of unseen beauty, or breath that catches at fragrances no one else can smell.My personal command of the English language is sorely inadequate when attempting to paint the eternal, still I have no recourse but to try.I have no choice, for love compels me to make you painfully, startlingly aware of this life-altering plunge into intimacy with Christ.

Beyond the precipice of pews and platforms, hymns, choir lofts and vestry, there is a tender beckoning.The Beloved voice is drawing, whispering, inviting, welcoming… and when we step forward with genuine abandon, we find ourselves in the heady grip of the One our soul does love.We are captured and sent deeper into Him.

It is a beautiful falling.