Gittel Fruma

So, after my last post regarding pride, I found it very difficult to write. I felt like anything I shared would be pompous and ridiculous… possibly self-righteous. The result = nothing for the last two months. However, upon cooking a late pot of cranberry sauce (for the first time), I had a revelation. I think I might be a cranberry.
“What’s that you say, crazy lady?” I know, I know. But really. Here’s how I reached this stunning conclusion…
I read the package for the cranberries, which included a simple recipe for cranberry sauce. We are nearing Chanukah and the time for Thanksgiving recipes is past, but I impulsively bought this bag of cranberries and I needed to use them before they went bad. There’s no time like the present, so let’s make some cranberry sauce! The recipe said to let the berries simmer until they start to pop. I thought, “Ok, popping sounds fun.” Sure enough, no sooner did my overly ripe cranberries hit the simmering pot of freshly squeezed orange juice, wild honey, cardamom and clove (you should know I cannot follow a recipe to save my life – always have to make it interesting!) they started a-burstin’. Then it hit me: “OMG, a cranberry I am.”
Before I sat down to write this post, I thought about what I should write. I thought about what’s been rattling around my head the last few months, what have I been doing with myself, where have all my missing neurons flown to… The one thing that I kept coming back to was a recent interaction I had with someone very close to me. It started off as passive aggression, led to a huge screaming match (thank God, they are a rare occasion in my life), then a quiet, humbling conversation. At the end of everything, I felt hurt, vulnerable and exposed. There I was, in the simmering saucepan of life, under pressure and overheated, and I finally popped. I lost it. I felt myself unwittingly leaking all over the place – emotions, thoughts, half-finished sentences, tears, possibly snot – and I felt horribly bare. This conversation has haunted me for the last several weeks. I find myself thinking about it when I’m washing dishes, I have strange dreams about this person, I keep thinking that I want to pull away and protect myself.
It’s not an easy thing to live among people. We are broken, hurtful, and self-centered. But God is love. Yeshua set very high standards for what a community should look like. It didn’t look like a “hi, how are you doing?” on Sunday. It didn’t involve limp handshakes at Thursday night Bible study. It didn’t include selfish self-preservation or entitled attitudes of injury. Messiah called us to Grace and Love.
I am a cranberry. This person is my fellow cranberry. Together we live in a simmering pot. This could be the most idiotic metaphor for my life I have ever thought of, or it could be the beginning of a new understanding of my life in Yeshua. Now that I have popped and this person has popped as well, here we are with our proverbial cranberry guts spilled out in glorious and sweet fellowship. We can’t separate ourselves anymore. We might as well give in to the fact that we will eventually be one. I can’t put myself back together or separate myself from this person because I am not supposed to do either. No one ever did anything in the power of the Holy Spirit by “having it together.” Fake-it-till-you-make-it was not a mandate of God. It is, however, how the majority of us make it through our lives, especially in regards to our relationships.
I am good at being on my own. There was a time when I prided myself on my ability to need no one. Then I let someone in. And someone else. And someone else after that. The more I have opened my heart, the more there is inside. It’s a cliche that’s often repeated and rarely understood. You have to give love to get love.
I don’t love this person because they’re perfect. I don’t love them because they’re always right or always nice. I don’t even love them because they love me. I love this person because I can’t help myself. And I hope the help never comes.

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. – 1 Peter 4:8 ESV