Plenty Good Room

“Plenty good room, plenty good room, plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom…”

I’ve been thinking about the ways I take up space. This isn’t the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last. The truth is that as a woman who has struggled with my weight for most of my life, thoughts concerning spacial issues are not new at all. I learned early on that I took up too much room. Too much room in the seat on the subway. Too much room in the aisles of department stores. Too much room in crowded hallways. Too much room in relationships. Too much room in places where there was plenty of room for everyone else. At worst, my girth made me a nuisance and at best an inconvenience. At least that’s what I thought. And so I taught myself how to fold myself up tightly so that my presence, my needs, my concerns, even my gifts wouldn’t crowd out or inconvenience anyone or anything. Like a pair of stockings in the plastic ball sold in drugstores, I tucked myself into myself and learned how to be acceptable, appropriately grateful, extremely helpful, endearing without asking for much in return. I learned how to not take up so much room.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that you can’t live tightly balled up and tucked inside of yourself. You can. I’ve done it long enough to know it’s possible. It’s possible to live. Possible to love. Possible to create. Possible to answer your life’s calling. Possible to have friendships. Possible to have relationships. Possible to make life work and to have a modicum of success. Just not possible to do any of those things while breathing deep breaths. At least not with lungs and soul fully expanded. You need room for that kind of breathing, living, and loving.

So on this evening, once again, I am giving myself permission to stretch out, to spread open, to ooze into the spaces that I need to be whole, to live more fully into freedom. Spanx on my hips may feel wonderful, but Spanx around my soul, my hopes, my dreams… not so much. I am willing to be an inconvenience. I am willing because whether or not others believe it… whether or not I have believed it, I’m worth it. I’m worth the space I take up. And if there is room, plenty good room for all us in this God’s kingdom, then I might as well come all the way out of this plastic egg. Take a very deep breath. Throw the plastic egg away. And experience the room that is good enough and tailored made just for me.