When the Only Fridge You Can Open Is Your Own, Your World Has Become Small

By Steve Gahagen

I was visiting with a couple who had just lost their last close relative. As we sat around their kitchen table, the wife said, “When the only fridge you can open is your own, your world has become small.” I thought that was a profound statement that speaks to the power and importance of close relationships. How many fridges can you open because you feel at home? I wonder what the average is and if it is lower than it was 20 years ago. It would be a fun challenge to assertively approach and then open the fridge of every person’s home you walk into.

When we host evening strengths mentoring clubs, we always include dinner. We try to stay away from pizza and quick meals to encourage sitting around a table and hanging out together, sharing our lives with one another. Often the teens seem content to hang around the table for long periods of time. I always think it is amazing when they’re not in a hurry to do something else.

Life-giving relationships are so important to young people and to us all. I believe it is a crisis of our day, especially for youth. How can we create environments in which it feels like the fridge can always be opened? How do we open up to one another so that we begin to feel safe and at home? We all want to feel at home. That’s why all those Hallmark homecoming commercials created such emotion, we all are on our way home.

We have found that asking simple positive questions on a consistent basis can help us open ourselves to one another and immerse us in life-giving community.

Try asking your team or group some of these questions on a weekly basis:

• Two things I’m grateful for

• Two recent successes

• Two positive words friends or family would use to describe me

• Two things you’re looking forward to

• What would make this week amazing?