* This is written for Five Minute Fridays. I messed up and did last weeks word. But my one word for this year is grace, so as a gracious act to myself I am grasping (grasp is this weeks word) grace and linking up anyway. I hope that is okay.

Wide. Wide like the ocean, like the sky, lke the Peanut’s arms when she flings them open “how about a hug!” How full do you fill the ocean before it is no longer full enough? How much till the width maxes out?

The table I wrote about Monday has widened, but still there is a limit to it’s width. There are a maximum number of chairs that match the set, and only a few more that can be squeezed in between.

When I came out about my recurring depression, I worried that that piece did not fit the narrative God is trying to tell through me. I felt like someone hunched at the table in a folding chair just trying to not knock elbows with those in the “real seats.”

The table is wider than that. It is wide enough to fit my whole self, all my mess, all the good, everything. There is always more room for all of me. It is wide enough that I do not have to scrunch myself together and hope I am not bothering anyone. There is always room.

I can feel myself spreading out, bringing all the pieces of my puzzle to this ever widening, always wide enough story and spreading them out. I am learnng not to worry about where I fit in or if I am in anyone elses space. I am simply looking at the pieces, noticing the ones you are showing me, joining this one with that one, as we piece together a story as wide as the ocean, that looks like Jesus.

But I have to trust that the table is wide enough to fit all of me. More often than not, the missing piece is the one I am holding in my pocket, too scared that the table is not wide enough to fit it. I am learning, I am learning to do that.

Hallelujah.