The Kitchen Summit Freezer

Open and Relational Theology & Social Psychology

THE 60-SECOND READ

The 60-Second Read

The Problem: You’re up against a deadline to make major life decisions and find a new career. You don’t know how your identity relates to others anymore. Who are you really? Self-doubt becomes crushing. You freeze, unable to plan or move forward.

The Insight: The endless unknowns and pressure keep you frazzled. You can’t think straight. You can’t sleep. You’re emotionally worn out and over-reactive to those you love. They’re with you both as passengers who mirror your attitude and actions, and as helpers.

The Action: You find a way to calm yourself. It’s difficult. But then you approach the problem with small steps and keep moving forward until it is solved.

This series: In the last series, we looked at identity and how it changes over time. In this series, we look at developing personal agency, which for our purposes is the ability to determine what you want and make it happen.

Personal Agency

Personal agency is the capacity to act independently and make your own choices, feeling you have control to influence your life, set goals, and take effective action to achieve them, rather than being a passive subject to external forces. It involves beliefs about your ability to make things happen (efficacy), planning (forethought), self-management, and persistence to navigate challenges and shape your own outcomes.

Self-Determination: The power to decide what you want and need.
Goal-Directed Action: Setting goals and taking deliberate steps to reach them.
Sense of Control: Feeling empowered and responsible for your life’s direction.
Efficacy & Competence: Believing in your ability to succeed and act effectively.
Contextual Awareness: Recognizing influences (like social structures or bad weather) but choosing how to respond to them.

Relevance: Without personal agency you get nowhere. God can make it possible. Only you have the power to take steps forward. But with God you become a creative force that makes a new future for you with dazzling prospects.

The_Family — The Family. Gemini Generated Image.

Chapter 2: Kitchen Summit Freezer

The usually busy kitchen was off to a slow start. Mary was cooking some pancakes. Elias was sipping coffee and looking tired and miserable. A pile of bills laid on the table in disarray. Sarah dragged in and dropped her book bag unceremoniously on the kitchen floor near her chair at the table. The book bag’s slim design shouted tablet. She flopped into a chair.

Mary said, “Want some pancakes, honey?”

“I want Dad to have an income,” she replied gloomily. “So I can go to college.”

“Things will work out,” Mary replied with a smile. “Your dad is going to make a plan today.”

Elias looked at her skeptically. “What makes you so sure things will work out?”

“I prayed about it.”

“Yeah, like you pray at funerals, and the dead never rise.”

“Oh, just be an- ” She put some pancakes onto his plate and her serene attitude returned. “There’s a peace and a knowing that comes if you just listen.”

Elias pointed to the pile of bills on the table. “You want a plan! The roar from those bills is deafening. I have a thousand questions banging around in my head and not a single answer. We could lose our home. I can’t think for all of these coming disasters hanging over me. The pressure is all on me, you know.”

Mary smiled lovingly at him. “You’re not alone. You have family around you.”

He relaxed some. “Well, you are my anchor. My calm.” He gave her a weak smile.

Sarah looked at them like they were nuts. “My college plans are out the window! I’m a cheerleader. That’s all I know. I can wait tables if I get some experience. I don’t know who I am now since I can’t go to college. My friends tell me you will use my college funds. It isn’t fair!”

Elias exploded. “I can’t even plan tomorrow. Endless questions with no answers. I don’t even know who we are, let alone where we’re going. Have you noticed I’m a one-trick pony and no one needs my tricks? How can I decide anything? We could lose our nice warm home and you’re worried about college and funds we haven’t even thought about touching.”

“I don’t need to hear this!” Sarah rose and picked up her book bag to leave. She took a few steps toward the door then stopped. She turned back.

“I had to take the Myers-Briggs and the Holland Code inventories to know who I am just to pick my gym class! I’m seventeen and I have to have a plan, but you’re forty-two and you’re just guessing? That’s not fair!”

Elias looked taken aback and confused. “What?” He absently picked up a bill from the table and waved it in the air. “It’s a ….” He looked at the envelope without recognition, angrily started ripping it, looked at a couple of lines still without recognition, and snapped his head to the side, a sharp display of his mounting irritation. “Uh. It’s something we have to pay soon. I can’t go back to high school and take aptitude tests! I can’t start over. I have bills to pay and a family to support. You, for instance!”

“There might be tools online. Just look.” She stepped toward the door.

“I’m forty-two, no college degree so that door is closed, and I have only one skill: troubleshooting company problems, which isn’t something to get hired for. I’m like a private investigator in a bathtub: lots of pretty bubbles but no clients. I can’t start over from high school—that’s insane.

“You could take college night classes. With that defeatist attitude you never would have made it in a cheer squad.”

“Defeatist?” Elias yelled at her. “You’re the one screaming about no college and using your college funds.”

As Sarah slammed the door, Elias angrily wiped all the bills off the table with his arm and put his head on the table.

Mary, sitting calmly in front of her laptop computer, didn’t flinch or even look at the floor. “Pick them up, Elias. Don’t act like a child. That kind of behavior isn’t going to help anything.”

Elias said in desperation, “I know who I am! But I’m useless in today’s job marketplace. I looked at a hundred jobs that I have no qualifications for.”

“Then look at a thousand more. You’re a very talented individual with a lot of worth to others. Get off your doomsday horse and start looking. Choose a direction. Explore it. If you sit in your office feeling bad about yourself, that’s like erecting a huge monument to your being useless, and it’s fake. It’s an ‘I’m not even trying monument’ to your ‘I can’t’ attitude.”

Elias angrily rose. “Any more advice you can throw a drowning man to help him sink faster?”

“I’m not criticizing, I’m trying to help! Taking those tests couldn’t hurt. I found this. It’s a Decision Matrix by a guy named Dorian Cole. It doesn’t ask you to solve the next five years. It asks you to solve the next five minutes. There’s a free version.”

She read from the screen, “And Harvard has Project Zero, to help individuals understand themselves by prompting structured reflection, with key examples like “Who Am I? (Explore, Connect, Identify, Belong)” asking about development, connections, and belonging.”

“I don’t need a matrix. I need a paycheck so we can buy food tomorrow. Can Harvard help with that.”

“You need a direction. You said you looked at a hundred jobs? Look at them differently.” She stood, walked to him, and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m reaching out to you. Meet me halfway. Stop trying to be the CEO of our survival. I’m okay. Just be the employee of this moment and do your job. Sit down. Take the test Sarah mentioned. Or use the matrix. Just… move the mouse.”

“I have so many questions I just can’t think,” he said apologetically.

“How do you address problems when you’re troubleshooting something for a company?”

“I start digging in one step at a time.”

“There’s your answer.” She embraced him and planted a kiss on his lips until he calmed down. “The answer was in you all the time. You just need to step away from the endless worries, and calm yourself and find it.”

He finally pulled away and smiled at her with love. He acquiesced to her smile and advice and sat down in front of the laptop, the screen glow showing the tired worry lines in his face. He looked again at the scattered bills, then at Mary’s expectant face. He put his hand on the mouse. It felt heavy, like he had no power to move it. He clicked.

“Question one ….”