Sweet and salty. Crisp. Gooey. Dripping with chocolate and overflowing with gusto. I’ve always characterized Rocky Road Ice Cream as a dessert with flavor, with spunk, with attitude. It’s not soft and fluffy. It punches to the core, demands attention, and boldly proclaims, “I’m here!”
When I have rough days, I crave Rocky Road Ice Cream.
Maybe it’s because the rich sweetness and texture awaken my senses—while giving me the permission to drown my sorrows in a tub of ice cream accompanied by a spoon. But mostly, when I eat Rocky Road Ice Cream, I’m reminded that life too is rocky. It’s sweet. It’s full of creamy marshmallow-y days and rigid almond-fortress kinda days. But when you mix the two together, something magical happens, something extraordinary takes place.
The melting pot days of sticky sweet are often—when we look back—the most delicious. Those days your to-do list seems insurmountable and you find an encouraging note from a friend in the mailbox; one relational chapter runs its course and a new one flourishes over a Starbucks Vanilla latte; you discover your finances aren’t where they need to be and develop a spreadsheet system the accountant at work would drool over; someone criticizes your work and you receive a Twitter DM about how you’re making a difference in the life of someone you don’t know that well.
Life is a mixture of the sugar-coated celebrations and ball-your-eyes-out desert storms. And we need both to make it the grand adventure that it is. It seems like a contradiction of sorts, but the two go together, hand-in-hand creating this yummy concoction called life.
On the days you find me eating Rocky Road straight out of the carton, it’s because I’m reminding myself that I need both the marshmallow-y and almond-y moments in order to become the woman God made me to be. My natural instinct is to see the rough and rigid rocky circumstances at a level that is so magnified that the savory instances get lost. And that’s not ok with me. I want my life to be rich in flavor, rich in gumption, and rich in celebration. I want to celebrate—to magnify—the moments Jesus is tangibly reaching down and saying, “Baby girl, I love you. Your story’s not over yet”, and I want to recognize the painful stuff without living there.
Life’s a Rocky Road, friends. The question is will we embrace all of the ingredients, savoring the sweet and appreciating the lessons learned in the rougher terrain? Or will the rocky patches drown out the good stuff, leaving us in a depressing pile of almonds?
This girl’s grabbing a spoon and inhaling the sticky sweet. Who’s with me?
