09/17/2021
Hello, everybody!
It’s been a couple years since I abruptly closed the shop. This will be a long post. But, if you stick with it and read it all, I think you’ll like the ending.
I have suffered from mental illness for most of my 42 years of life. Childhood trauma and abuse created a sickness in me that had destroyed much of who I was as a person. I have spent the last 2 years trying to heal and repair my broken sanity. I thank my wife so much for allowing me to do so. It’s because of her, because of her love and support, that I haven’t long left this wretched earth.
I love my wife. Not because I want to. No, because I’m compelled to. Forced like the tides to rise with the moon. I cannot stop loving her any more than breathing; and you can only hold your breath for so long.
This love, this true and absolute love that I now know exists, far outshines what I thought love was before.
With my newfound knowledge of love I compared it to John 3:16, and really, all of the book of John whether the Apostle or Lennon.
And Love is all you need.
God IS love. Jesus says he loves us, the Bible tells me so. I believe it’s impossible for the pure and perfect love of God, Who died for us while we were yet sinners, to conditionally condemn us afterwards. My imperfect love for my wife still allows for her to be her. Not judge her or her choices but accept her as she is. An individual living her own life with her own problems. Things that I could never understand but accept anyhow. I have to after all. How can I not? Like me, love compels her to offer me the same forgiveness, gives her the same sense of wholeness and rightness that I feel. How easy it would be if we all followed a God of love like that. Or even just set our minds to do it, whether by faith or just because we exist as humans together. To not condemn one another for their beliefs or lack thereof. To be excited to see others in love no matter who or what they are. I know there are millions out there who know love like ours and all over the world. We are all human. We all break. We all bleed. The triggers may not be the same, nor the intensity the same degree. But pain is pain. Sad is sad. Fear is fear. Lonely is lonely. And love is love. If we all hurt the same then why is it so hard to to not love each other the same way we wish we were loved ourselves? Knowing full well how grateful I am of my wife’s acceptance of my broken self, I cannot and will not follow a God who does not love. I believe any true God will love anyone who also loves all others. It is, after all, the greatest commandment sayeth the Lord. I’m just a 42 year old broken human; broken like the rest of you as we all have our battles and demons. Seeing as there are around 10k of you who like this page, imagine if just this group loved everyone for who they were and stopped judging. Imagine what it would feel like to have 10k people accept you for you. No strings attached. What a world we would have if every single human loved each other. The unabashed love and acceptance of my wonderful wife, just one person, is almost unbearable. I can’t fathom a whole planet loving me. But I’m willing to give the world a try.
I love you all and I appreciated your support of our little shop. I know this wasn’t an answer to what happened to Libby’s Ice Cream, but I leave you with this…My own personal recipe to make in your own home and share with those around you. Yep, the exact same frozen milk you enjoyed in downtown Jasper.
It is a gift freely given and I really hope you enjoy.
Have an awesome day!!
-Matt
4-cups sugar
4 1/2- tsp vanilla
1/2- tsp salt
2- 12 oz cans of evaporated milk
1- quart of heavy whipping cream
1/2- gallon of milk
8- 8 eggs (use pasteurized eggs if you’d like to be safe)
Mix it all together then freeze!!
Pro tip: whisk the eggs first and they’ll blend better as you add the rest of the ingredients.
