Frosty windows. Some little house on the Iron Range, Minnesota. Maybe four years old. I ask Mom what happened. She mysteriously exclaimed, "Oh! Jack Frost came to visit last night!" And then she told me how he paints the windows at night in the wintertime. I've loved them ever since.

Dad called today. After hitting 26 degrees below zero and finding frost on the corner of a window this morning, I told him that memory. "Dad, I'll bet all your childhood windows were frosty in the winter."

"Oh, not just the windows. When we were kids, Don and I slept upstairs in the farmhouse with no insulation. We'd wake up in the morning and that whole ceiling was all white with frost!"

When he first called, Dad was a little down, but those memories filled him with life and laughter. "Its was so cold up there. Whooooo! One time I had to go to the bathroom bad. It was so cold I didn't want to get up and go to the outhouse. I knew my dad would kill me, but I opened the window (no storms in those days) and just peed right out and hightailed it back under the covers. Of course, the yellow evidence was there, and my folks figured it out. Boy, was my dad mad! Oh, I haven't thought of that in years!" And he laughed -- just the medicine he needed.

Dad has never liked the cold. But, Findlander to the core (son of a Laplander) he will tough it out no matter what. He was telling me how hard things are as he approaches 90 in a couple of months. Then, without missing a beat, he proudly announced that he hasn't missed a day going out for a walk this week. As a matter of fact, he walked four blocks in below zero weather yesterday!

Dear Lord, how I love him!

From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the frost of heaven? Job 38:29