The Ice Cream Truck

Recently I typed this sentence into google: Is the ice cream truck still a thing? The answer was yes, there are still ice cream trucks, but they’re not as common as they used to be.

I was sorry to hear they’re less common now—I used to love them!

Do you remember the cheerful, jingly tune that accompanies the ice cream truck? I remember it well. First, it would be so faint I wasn’t sure if it was real or if it was just my wishful thinking on a hot summer afternoon. Then as it came closer, the music would become unmistakable and I’d run inside and begin desperately searching for enough spare coins to pay for an ice cream sandwich or popsicle. Sometimes I couldn’t get back outside quickly enough and I’d miss it. Other times, the truck never made it all the way to my street. What a disappointment! And I’d try to guess which way it was heading so that I could cut across various neighbors’ backyards to meet it.

I continued loving that cheerful, jingly tune announcing the ice cream truck until I brought my first baby, Lillian, home from the hospital.

Some babies cry a little and others cry a lot. My Lillian cried a lot. She couldn’t help it. She was clearly very uncomfortable. Her face would turn deep red as she screamed inconsolably for many, many hours every day. The doctor said it was colic and there was nothing to be done about it except to wait for her to outgrow it. That took about four months.

I’ll never forget the relief I felt when Lillian would finally succumb to sleep, her face all splotchy from crying. I would tiptoe out of her room, and carefully close the door while silently praying that she’d sleep for at least an hour.

And sometimes, as I was tiptoeing down the hall away from Lillian’s room, my shoulders just beginning to relax, I’d hear the distant, jingly tune of the ice cream truck, still so far off it might have been my fearful imagination. As the music grew unmistakably clearer I would think to myself, OH, no. Not now. Please, not now! I would hope and pray that that happy little truck would turn down some other street—any other street but mine. It never did. It would stop nearby, bringing joy to so many neighborhood children and bringing an abrupt end to my hope for an hour of peaceful silence as Lillian began to cry.

I came to despise that cheerful, jingly tune.

Have you ever read the book, The Horse and His Boy, by C.S. Lewis? I illustrated my favorite scene in that book—the part where the main character, a boy named Shasta, is lost in a foggy, forest and overcome with sadness. It turns out that the great lion, Aslan, is walking there beside him. Instead of telling Shasta to cheer up or look on the bright side, he simply says, “tell me your sorrows.”

Isn’t it wonderful that God knows how to enter our pain? He doesn’t sing cheerful, jingly tunes when we need silence. He doesn’t flippantly tell us to look on the bright side when we pour our hearts out to Him.

Proverbs 25:20 says, “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.”

Blessings to you today as you take both joy and comfort in the Lord.

~Amy