The Triangle

     Watching design shows the most popular piece of advice that comes up when designing a kitchen is that it should be a triangle. I don't think it matters if it's equalateral or right angle or one of the other terms I've forgotten from geometry. The point is to have your oven, refrigerator and sink on one of the three points. By design both my childhood home and current kitchen adhered to this advice but when I used each kitchen the design had been altered and the triangle broken. For some reason as I write this I am seeing the instrument known as the triangle. It is open on one end yet still works. I guess what that's telling me is that my kitchens still worked just not efficiently. 
      Let's go on a field trip today shall we? Back to my childhood home in Santa Ana where I'll show you the origianl design of the kitchen. We enter the kitchen from the dining room. To the left of the doorway is a long wall with a window in the middle. The refrigerator is at the far end of the wall facing out. Next to it on another wall is a counter and sink (under another window) and then another counter. Across from the sink is the oven/stove. Did you see the triangle. It was there by design. My father broke the triangle somewhere along the way. He moved the refrigerator to the service porch and built a long counter with storage underneath along the wall. The window was lower than the counter so he went around it. Not sure why. The window couldn't be opened because you couldn't reach it: the counter was too wide. Now the refrigerator ended up on the same wall as the stove but there was a wall between them. Our food pantry was also on the service porch. The oven still baked. The burners still held a pan and boiled water. The sink was still useful for washing dishes and the garbage disposal worked. The refrigerator/freezer still kept our food cold and colder. They just didn't work well together, according to recommended design. The triangle was broken. 
      Let's get out of the time machine now and come to my current kitchen. The sink is on one wall. The stove/oven and space for the refrigerator is across on the other long wall. Wait a minute, did I say space for refrigerator? Yes, you heard right. Our french door refrigerator is too wide for the space. Even if we could remove the molding on the wall and shove it in there, it wouldn't work. The doors wouldn't open and it would block the built in pantry. So our refrigerator isn't even in our kitchen. Talk about a broken triangle. The frig is in the dining area--yes area--too small to be considered a room. It's also open to the living room. Space broke the triangles. My father wanted more storage space and I don't have enough space. There's another triangle that comes to mind: the trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. You remember them? They're the 3 men Don McClean admired most in his song American Pie. Anyway, nothing can break the trinity but sin puts space between us and the Triune God. But the Great Designer provided a way to bridge that gap by sending us His Son to die for our sins. We cross that bridge by faith, by believing in Him and repenting of our sins.